Building a lasting accessibility strategy: Part 1

Posted: Thursday, 10 July 2025

Welcome to the first in a series of posts where I'll share my experiences of building a lasting accessibility strategy and programme at a software company whose platform is used by millions of people worldwide. Building a successful, sustainable accessibility strategy takes time, patience and a lot of hard work. There's no single "right" way to do it - what I'm sharing here is what worked for me. Feel free to take the bits that resonate and adapt them to your own organisation.

To keep things simple, I'm going to use the word "website" as a placeholder for digital products, services, platforms and apps.

Laying the foundation

Knowing where to begin with such a big task can feel overwhelming. The best place to start is with the basics: establish the why, define the goal, gather supporting data, and identify your current areas of weakness.

Define the goal

Before diving into the current state of accessibility in your organisation, take a step back and ask: in an ideal world, what would accessibility look like here? That vision is your starting point.

Your goal might be something like "everyone can use our website, no matter their ability or technology" or "we meet WCAG 2.2 AA across all websites." From there, break the big vision into smaller, practical goals - both short and long term. For example: "Update our component library to meet WCAG 2.2 AA conformance."

Whatever the goals are, they should be clear, achievable, and something people can rally behind. If they're too vague or too ambitious, it'll be hard to make progress. These goals then become the foundation of your accessibility roadmap. Don't worry if you don't yet know every area that needs attention - that discovery will come in the next step.

Find the gaps

Once you have a goal in mind, look at your organisation's current accessibility practices. How well is accessibility built into everyday processes? At this stage, you don't need to dive into detailed WCAG failures or full audits. That said, if you already have an accessibility audit of your website, it can be a useful reference for spotting where processes are breaking down.

The focus here should be on processes and gaps. A survey can be a great way to spark conversation, collect perspectives, and build a clearer picture of your accessibility landscape. The goal is to uncover barriers or knowledge gaps that might be holding your teams back.

Example survey topics:

General awareness of accessibility
How accessibility is prioritised within their role and team
Existing accessibility processes or considerations in their team
Understanding of relevant laws, regulations and directives - e.g. for UK public sector bodies: Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR); in the US: ADA Title II or Section 508; in the EU: European Accessibility Act (EAA)
Awareness of the user impact of accessiblility
How their role can directly or indirectly affect accessibility
Understanding of technical guidelines such as WCAG 2.2
Knowledge of accessibility testing and assistive technologies

Send the survey to as many people as possible across different roles - including frontline contributors like designers, developers, and testers, as well as those who influence priorities, such as product owners, project managers, and senior leaders. Follow up with conversations to unpack the findings. For larger teams, consider tailoring survey questions to specific roles or departments.

Gather useful data

Solid data can help counter common misconceptions, such as the dreaded "Disabled people don't use our website", and strengthens the case for investment in accessibility. It also helps get leadership on board by showing the scale and impact.

Around 1 in 4 people in both the UK and US have some form of disability. That's not a niche - it's a significant share of your audience.
Globally, 1.3 billion people experience significant disability (16% of the world's population, according to the WHO).
In the UK, disabled households represent an estimated £274 billion in annual spending power (often called the Purple Pound). In the US, it's over $490 billion.
WebAIM's 2024 study of the top 1 million websites found that 96% had detectable WCAG failures on their homepage.

Useful sources:

Building a plan

Once you know where you stand and where the gaps are, the next step is to create a plan to address them. This usually includes a mix of resources, training, and ongoing support, such as:

Internal resources like accessibility guides or knowledge bases
Awareness-building activities (lunch-and-learns, empathy labs, talks from lived-experience speakers)
General accessibility awareness training
Role specific training for designers, developers, testers and other relevant groups
Periodic refresher training
An internal network of accessibility champions
Dedicated accessibility Slack/Teams channels
A designated accessibility lead or team
Testing, auditing and monitoring

Accessibility maturity models

Accessibility maturity models can be useful throughout the journey of creating an effective accessibility strategy.

Rather than focusing only on technical compliance (e.g. whether your site meets WCAG 2.2 AA), they provide a structured way to evaluate how well accessibility is embedded across your organisation—through leadership, culture, training, processes, and technology.

They usually break things down into categories and stages of maturity, from ad-hoc to developing, established, and optimised. They help you:

Get a baseline view of where you are today
Identify gaps and areas to improve
Set realistic goals for growth
Track progress over time
Communicate achievements to leadership in a clear, strategic way

Two examples worth looking at are:

W3C Accessibility Maturity Model – A high-level framework with seven dimensions (including communications, knowledge, and culture) measured across stages from Inactive through to Optimise. It's designed to help organisations of all sizes embed accessibility into everyday operations and align with governance and compliance.
AbilityNet's Digital Accessibility Maturity Model (DAMM) – A more practical toolkit designed to help organisations carry out structured assessments, set future goals, and create a roadmap of improvements. DAMM is available in a general form and a tailored version for higher education, making it adaptable to different contexts.

The big benefit of maturity models is that they help shift thinking away from one-off fixes toward long-term cultural change.

Existing issues

At this stage, you probably won't have a full picture of all the accessibility issues in your website, and that's okay. Many organisations fall into the trap of starting with full audits, which can lead to endless cycles of technical fixes without addressing the root causes: knowledge gaps and culture.

Audits and testing are important, but right now the priority is laying the foundations that support ongoing accessibility. Light-touch audits, however, can still be useful to highlight a few issues and provide tangible examples that help build the case with leadership.

Leadership buy-in

Once you've identified the gaps, created a clear plan, and gathered supporting data, it's time to get leadership on board.

Without strong support from the top, accessibility efforts often stall. Leadership buy-in sets expectations, signals commitment, and helps embed accessibility into everyday practice.

When approaching leadership, come prepared with:

A clear plan to addressing gaps
A list of needs (budget, visibility, endorsement, barrier removal)
A strong business case (statistics, user stories, competitive benchmarks)
A reminder: accessibility is both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do

The why

Remember, many leaders won't be deeply familiar with accessibility. Keep it simple and cover the essentials:

What accessibility is and why it matters
Statistics: e.g. 1 in 4 people in the UK have a disability - meaning almost every website serves disabled users
Benefits for everyone: permanent, temporary, and situational impairments affect all of us
User feedback: share real stories from disabled users who encountered barriers
Benchmarking data: if relevant, e.g. Silktide index rankings

The business case

Highlight the advantages, the risks of inaction, and the broader impact:

Better customer experiences: accessible websites and content are often faster, simpler, and easier to use for all users - not just disabled people. Everyone benefits from clearer design and smoother interactions.
Stronger loyalty: when organisations take accessibility seriously, they earn the trust of disabled customers. Research shows that disabled users tends to be more loyal and more likely to recommend businesses that truly include them.
Reduced risks: the cost of getting accessibility wrong is rising. Poor accessibility can lead to frustrated users, negative press, and even legal action. Laws and running like the UK's Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR), the US's ADA, and the European Accessibility Act (EAA) require compliance with standards like WCAG.
Financial aspect: excluding disabled customers isn't just unfair, it's expensive. UK businesses lose an estimated £2 billion every month by not meeting their needs (The Purple Pound). On top of that, it's much cheaper to build accessibility in from the start - IBM found that fixing issues after launch can cost four to five times more.
Future-ready design: Accessibility doesn't just help people - it also helps technology. As organisations invest in AI and automation, accessible content is easier for machines to understand and work with, making your digital services more future-proof.

Alignments with leadership goals

Show how accessibility supports your organisation's existing values and priorities, such as "putting the user first" or DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion).

Be clear about what you need

Finally, set out the commitments required, such as:

Budget for training, resources, or dedicated accessibility roles
Ongoing support from senior leadership
Visible endorsement in communications, decision-making and cultural change
Inclusion of accessibility in KPIs, OKRs, roadmaps, and review processes

Once you have leadership buy-in and a solid plan it's time to start building the culture, which is covered in part 2.