Accessibility Isn’t a Line Item, It’s Part of the Process

HappyFunCorp - Accessibility is part of the process

Jun 3, 2025

In a fast-moving tech environment, product priorities often revolve around growth, speed, innovation, and market share. But if your digital products aren’t accessible to people with disabilities, you’re leaving a significant portion of potential users on the table — and you’re exposing your company to legal risk, reputational damage, and costly rebuilds.

The good news? There’s a simple, scalable way to get ahead of these problems before they start: write accessibility guidelines and make them part of your product development culture.

We know that accessibility guidelines are critical because we’ve written them. Our guidelines are the source of truth for our developers, no matter what kind of project they’re working on. We know what great looks like, and we’re so committed to that vision that we codified it.

If you’re a tech executive, this isn’t just a design or dev team problem. It’s a leadership opportunity. Accessibility shouldn’t be a line item — it should be part of your design and development processes. Let’s explore why accessibility matters, how it pays off, and what your teams need from you to get it right.

Saving accessibility for later comes at a cost

Building products is expensive. The price of rebuilding them because of accessibility concerns is exponentially higher — and the price of choosing not to address accessibility is… well, ask Domino’s Pizza.

Digital accessibility lawsuits are on the rise. Companies of all sizes — startups, SaaS platforms, e-commerce giants — are increasingly facing litigation under laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508.

The costs can be staggering. Lawsuits don’t just bring legal fees — they bring engineering hours, rushed rebuilds, PR damage, and shaken user trust.

Now let’s flip the script. Companies that prioritize accessibility early in their workflows avoid these costs entirely. Even better, they expand their user base, improve SEO and performance, and build a brand reputation rooted in inclusive innovation. Accessibility is more than a defense — it’s a growth lever.

Save time and build smarter with accessibility guidelines

It’s easy to say that accessibility is important. It’s harder to make that real across a fast-paced, cross-functional team.

That’s where accessibility guidelines come in.

Guidelines translate abstract principles — like “support keyboard navigation” or “ensure proper contrast” — into clear, consistent standards your team can act on. They make accessibility repeatable, trainable, and testable. More importantly, they show your team that inclusion isn’t just a one-off conversation — it’s a foundational part of how your company ships software.

Without guidelines, teams are left guessing. Designers may choose fonts that are too small. Developers may use

tags instead of semantic elements. QA teams may not know what “accessible” even looks like. Each of these small oversights adds up — until one day, you’re staring down a complete rebuild or a lawsuit.

With guidelines, your team works from a shared playbook. Everyone knows what “good” looks like, and accessibility isn’t something you scramble to fix — it’s something you build from the start.

What good accessibility guidelines look like

Writing accessibility guidelines doesn’t have to be complicated. They need to be relevant, actionable, and living documents, and they need to make sense to your team. Ours were written by team members who understand our culture, standards, and values — all of which are critical to writing guidelines that will resonate with your team.

From experience, here’s what to include:

1. Design standards

Outline rules for color contrast, font size, focus states, spacing, and non-text content like icons and images. Design is your first line of defense for usability.

2. Development best practices

Include guidance on semantic HTML, ARIA attributes, keyboard interactions, and screen reader support. Your dev team needs specifics.

3. UX patterns

Accessibility also lives in the words and flows your users experience. Define how to write alt text, structure headings, and create accessible error messages.

4. Testing and review processes

Embed accessibility into your QA and CI/CD pipelines. List recommended tools (like axe, Lighthouse, or WAVE) and manual testing steps.

5. Role-based responsibilities

Make it crystal clear who owns what. Accessibility is a team sport — your guidelines should spell out how each role contributes.

Make guidelines part of your workflows

Accessibility guidelines won’t help if they’re buried in a dusty Confluence page no one reads.

Instead:

Embed them into your design system and dev docs.

Use checklists in code review and design handoff templates.

Train your team on how and when to use them.

Update them regularly to reflect what your team learns.

Even better, appoint an accessibility lead or champion to keep the guidelines alive and integrated into your workflows. Our accessibility specialists regularly review and update our guidelines with new versions of best practices and adaptations for new development languages.

Train early, test often

Here’s where many organizations miss the mark: they invest in tools but forget to invest in people. If your team doesn’t understand accessibility, they can’t implement it — no matter how good your guidelines are.

Training is your secret weapon. It turns accessibility from a compliance checkbox into a competency. And when people know what to look for, they catch issues earlier — when they’re easier and cheaper to fix.

Make accessibility training part of your team’s ongoing professional development:

Run short, role-specific workshops for design, engineering, and QA.

Offer onboarding sessions for new hires.

Provide access to accessibility resources

Testing is just as critical. Pair automated tools with manual testing using keyboards, screen readers, and real assistive tech. Not only does this improve your product — it builds empathy and awareness across your team.

Accessibility isn’t just the “right” thing to do — it’s a critical part of the design and development process

Investing in accessibility isn’t about slowing down development. It’s about building better products faster — with fewer costly surprises. It’s about expanding your reach to millions of users with disabilities. It’s about protecting your brand and future-proofing your platform in a rapidly evolving legal and ethical landscape.

And yes, it’s about doing the right thing — for your users, your team, and your company.

But most importantly, it’s about leadership. When you prioritize accessibility, you set a standard that echoes across your organization: We build products that include everyone. We care about quality. We care about people.

That’s a legacy worth investing in.

It starts with getting started

Building accessibility guidelines is a step-by-step process. It’s better to start with something small than not to have anything at all.

Our tips:

Tailor to your guidelines to your tools and team culture

Plan to invest in training and extensive testing

Support your people with the time, resources, and leadership they need to do this right, especially during onboarding

The cost of inaction is steep. But the payoff — for your product, your business, and your users — is bigger than you think.

Now’s the time to make accessibility part of your strategy. Not just because you have to — but because your team, your customers, and your bottom line will be better for it. Check out our guidelines here.

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