Why Accessibility Matters for Every Organization
As an accessibility manager, your role is one of the most important in your organization. You are responsible for ensuring that every digital experience is usable by people with disabilities. But where do you actually begin when you are starting from scratch?
This guide gives you a clear, actionable roadmap to build a sustainable digital accessibility program that delivers real results.
Step 1 — Understand Your Current State
Before you can fix anything, you need to know what you are dealing with. Start by conducting a baseline accessibility audit of your most critical digital assets.
What to Audit First
- Your main website homepage and navigation
- Your most visited landing pages
- Any customer-facing forms or checkout flows
- Mobile applications if applicable
- PDF documents and downloadable resources
Use free tools like WAVE and axe DevTools to get an initial picture of your accessibility issues. These tools will identify approximately 30 to 40 percent of all accessibility issues automatically.
Step 2 — Learn the Standards
You cannot build an accessibility program without understanding the standards you are working toward. The most important standard is WCAG 2.2 — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the W3C.
The Four Core Principles of WCAG
- Perceivable — Information must be presentable in ways users can perceive
- Operable — Interface components must be operable by all users
- Understandable — Information and operation must be understandable
- Robust — Content must be robust enough for assistive technologies
For most organizations, the target conformance level is WCAG 2.2 Level AA. This is the level required by most laws and regulations worldwide including the ADA, the European Accessibility Act, and Section 508.
Step 3 — Build Your Team
Accessibility cannot be owned by one person. You need to build a cross-functional accessibility team that includes representatives from every department that touches digital content.
Key Roles You Need
- Accessibility Champion — Someone in leadership who sponsors the program
- Developers — Frontend engineers who implement accessible code
- Designers — UX designers who create accessible interfaces from the start
- Content Authors — Writers who understand accessible content practices
- QA Testers — Testers trained in both automated and manual testing
The most successful accessibility programs embed accessibility into every stage of the product lifecycle — from discovery and design through development and testing to launch and monitoring.
Step 4 — Create Your Policy and Roadmap
Every accessibility program needs a formal accessibility policy that states your organization’s commitment to digital inclusion. This document should be:
- Approved and signed by senior leadership
- Publicly posted on your website as an accessibility statement
- Reviewed and updated at least once per year
- Accompanied by a clear remediation roadmap with deadlines
Your roadmap should prioritize issues based on impact to users and legal risk. Fix the most critical barriers first — things like missing form labels, poor color contrast and lack of keyboard navigation support.
Step 5 — Train Your Teams
Training is the most important investment you can make in your accessibility program. Without trained teams, the same accessibility issues will keep appearing in every new product you build.
Training by Role
- Developers — Semantic HTML, ARIA, keyboard navigation, focus management
- Designers — Color contrast, touch targets, focus indicators, accessible patterns
- Content authors — Alt text, heading structure, plain language, accessible links
- Testers — Screen reader testing, keyboard testing, automated scanning tools
Deque University offers the world’s most comprehensive role-based accessibility training. It is the resource we recommend most to organizations building their accessibility programs.
Step 6 — Measure and Report Progress
What gets measured gets improved. You need to establish clear metrics to track the progress of your accessibility program over time.
Key Metrics to Track
- Number of critical accessibility issues found per audit
- Average time to remediate accessibility issues
- Percentage of new components that are accessible on first review
- Number of team members trained in accessibility
- WCAG conformance level achieved across your digital properties
Conclusion
Building a digital accessibility program from scratch is a significant undertaking — but it is also one of the most rewarding things you can do for your organization and for the millions of users with disabilities who depend on accessible digital experiences every day.
Start with a clear audit, learn the standards, build your team, create your policy, train your people and measure your progress. Take it one step at a time and you will build a program that lasts.
At Accessibility Pros we help organizations at every stage of their accessibility journey. Contact us today to learn how we can help you build a world-class digital accessibility program.