Fostering An Accessibility Culture
Original Source: https://smashingmagazine.com/2025/04/fostering-accessibility-culture/
A year ago, I learned that my role as an accessibility engineer was at risk of redundancy. It was a tough moment, both professionally and personally. For quite some time, my mind raced with guilt, self-doubt, plain sadness… But as I sat with these emotions, I found one line of thought that felt productive: reflection. What did I do well? What could I have done better? What did I learn?
Looking back, I realized that as part of a small team in a massive organization, we focused on a long-term goal that we also believed was the most effective and sustainable path: gradually shaping the organization’s culture to embrace accessibility.
Around the same time, I started listening to “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. The connection was immediate. Habits and culture are tightly linked concepts, and fostering an accessibility culture was really about embedding accessibility habits into everyone’s processes. That’s what we focused on. It took us time (and plenty of trial and error) to figure this out, and while there’s no definitive playbook for creating an accessibility program at a large organization, I thought it might help others if I shared my experiences.
Before we dive in, here’s a quick note: This is purely my personal perspective, and you’ll find a bias towards culture and action in big organizations. I’m not speaking on behalf of any employer, past or present. The progress we made was thanks to the incredible efforts of every member of the team and beyond. I hope these reflections resonate with those looking to foster an accessibility culture at their own companies.
Goals Vs. Systems
To effectively shape habits, it’s crucial to focus on systems and processes (who we want to become) rather than obsessing over a final goal (or what we want to achieve). This perspective is especially relevant in accessibility.
Take the goal of making your app accessible. If you focus solely on achieving compliance without changing your systems (embedding accessibility into processes and culture), progress will be temporary.
For example, you might request an accessibility audit and fix the flagged issues to achieve compliance. While this can provide “quick” results, it’s often a short-lived solution.
Software evolves constantly: features are rewritten, old code is removed, and new functionality is added. Without an underlying system in place, accessibility issues can quickly resurface. Worse, this approach may reinforce the idea that accessibility is something external, checked by someone else, and fixed only when flagged. Not to mention that it becomes increasingly expensive the later accessibility issues are addressed in the process. It can also feel demoralizing when accessibility becomes synonymous with a long list of last-minute tickets when you are busiest.
Despite this, companies constantly focus on the goal rather than the systems.
“Accessibility is both a state and a practice.”
— Sommer Panage, SwiftTO talk, “Building Accessibility into Your Company, Team, and Culture”
I’ll take the liberty of tweaking that to an aspirational state. Without recognizing the importance of the practice, any progress made is at risk of regression.
Instead, I encourage organizations to focus on building habits and embedding good accessibility practices into their workflows. A strong system not only ensures lasting progress but also fosters a culture where accessibility becomes second nature.
What Is Your Actual Goal?
That doesn’t mean goals are useless — they’re very effective in setting up direction.
In my team, we often said (only half-jokingly) that our ultimate goal was to put ourselves out of a job. This mindset reflects an important principle: accessibility is a cross-organizational responsibility, not the task of a single person or team.
That’s why, in my opinion, focusing solely on compliance rather than culture transformation (or prioritizing the “state” of accessibility over the “practice”) is a flawed strategy.
The real goal should be to build a user-centric culture where accessibility is embedded in every workflow, decision, and process. By doing so, companies can create products where accessibility is not about checking boxes and closing tickets but delivering meaningful and inclusive experiences to all users.
How Do We Get There?
Different companies (of various sizes, structures, and cultures) will approach accessibility differently, depending on where they are in their journey. I still have to meet, though, an accessibility team that ever felt they had enough resources. This makes careful resource allocation a cornerstone of your strategy. And while there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, shifting left (addressing issues earlier in the development process) tends to be the most effective approach in most cases.
Design Systems
If your company has a design system, partnering with the team that owns it can be one of your biggest wins. Fixing a single component used across dozens of places improves the experience everywhere it’s used. This approach scales beautifully.
Involvement in foundational decisions and discussions, like choosing color palettes, typography, and component interactions, and so on, can also be very valuable. Contributing to documentation and guidelines tailored to accessibility can help teams across the organization make informed decisions.
For a deeper dive, I recommend Feli Bernutz’s excellent talk, “Designing APIs: How to Ensure Accessibility in Design Systems.”
Still, I would encourage everyone to strive to change that mindset.
Doing accessibility for economic or legal reasons is valid, but it can lead to perverse incentives, where the bare minimum and compliance become the strategy, or where teams constantly need to prove their return on investment.
It is better to do it for the “wrong” reasons than not to do it at all. But ultimately, those aren’t the reasons we should be doing it.
The “13 Letters” podcast opened with an incredibly interesting two-part episode featuring Mike Shebanek. In it, Mike explains how Apple eventually renewed its commitment to accessibility because, in the state of Maine, schools were providing Macs and needed a screen reader for students who required one. It seems like a somewhat business-driven decision. But years later, Tim Cook famously stated, “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He also remarked, “Accessibility rights are human rights.”
That’s the mindset I wish more CEOs and leaders had. It is a story of how a change of mindset from “we have to do it” to “it is a core part of what we do” leads to a lasting and successful accessibility culture. Going beyond the bare minimum, Apple has become a leader in accessibility. An innovative company that consistently makes products more accessible and pushes the entire industry forward.
The Good News
Once good habits are established, they tend to stick around. When I was let go, some people (I’m sure trying to comfort me) said the accessibility of the app would quickly regress and that the company would soon realize their mistake. Unexpectedly for them, I responded that I actually hoped it wouldn’t regress anytime soon. That, to me, would be the sign that I had done my job well.
And honestly, I felt confident it wouldn’t. Incredible people with deep knowledge and a passion for accessibility and building high-quality products stayed at the company. I knew the app was in good hands.
But it’s important not to fall into complacency. Cultures can be taken for granted, but they need constant nurturing and protection. A company that hires too fast, undergoes a major layoff, gets acquired, experiences high turnover, or sees changes in leadership or priorities… Any of these can pretty quickly destabilize something that took years to build.
Wrapping Up
This might not be your experience, and what we did may not work for you, but I hope you find this insight useful. I have, as they say, strong opinions, but loosely held. So I’m looking forward to knowing what you think and learning about your experiences too.
There’s no easy way or silver bullet! It’s actually very hard! The odds are against you. And we tend to constantly be puzzled about why the world is against us doing something that seems so obviously the right thing to do: to invite and include as many people as possible to use your product, to remove barriers, to avoid exclusion. It is important to talk about exclusion, too, when we talk about accessibility.
“Even though we were all talking about inclusion, we each had a different understanding of that word. Exclusion, on the other hand, is unanimously understood as being left out (…) Once we learn how to recognize exclusion, we can begin to see where a product or experience that works well for some might have barriers for someone else. Recognizing exclusion sparks a new kind of creativity on how a solution can be better.”
— Kat Holmes
Something that might help: always assume goodwill and try to meet people where they are. I need to remind myself of this quite often.
“It is all about understanding where people are, meeting them where they’re at (…) People want to fundamentally do the right thing (…) They might not know what they don’t know (…) It might mean stepping back and going to the fundamentals (…) I know some people get frustrated about having to re-explain accessibility over and over again, but I believe that if we are not willing to do that, then how are we gonna change the hearts and minds of people?”
— Jennison Asuncion
I’d encourage you to:
If you haven’t, just start. No matter what.
Play the long game, and focus more on systems and processes than just goals.
Build a network: rally allies around you and secure buy-in from leadership by showing that accessibility is not extra work; if considered after the fact, they’re actually missed steps.
Shift left and be strategic: reflect on where your limited resources can have the biggest, most lasting impact.
Be persistent. Be resilient.
But honestly, anything you can do is progress. And progress is all we need, just for things to be a little better every day. Your job is incredibly important. Thanks for all you do!
Accessibility: This is the way!
