Beyond the Checklist: Making Accessibility Part of Product Development

Accessibility is often treated as a final checkpoint: something to audit, test, and fix just before a product goes live. But by then, many of the decisions that shape an accessible experience have already been made.

This talk explores what happens when accessibility moves beyond compliance and becomes part of the way product teams work. From research and design to development and QA, we’ll explore practical ways to build accessibility into each stage of the product lifecycle, clarify shared responsibilities, and create processes that prevent barriers rather than fix them later. Because accessibility works best when it’s not one person’s checklist, but a team’s way of working.