Top misconceptions and myths about accessibility

Here are some (recent) common myths and misconceptions in the world of accessibility. These are then followed by prompts for you to both research and use in response to challenges you might face — to keep you on the right track in your journey to improving accessibility in your organisation.

We don't have any / many disabled people who use our product or service

• How have you arrived at this viewpoint? What data and insights back this up?
• Are you assuming 'no news is good news?' If there are accessibility barriers in your product or service could they be preventing people from providing you feedback about issues you have?
• What's your understanding of the word 'disability'? Have you considered how many people have less visible disabilities and impairments?
• Have you made use of this website? Estimate the number of people with disabilities using your website./

Our developers will find and fix issues

• What evidence have your developers provided to assure you they can successfully own accessibility?
• In which parts of the product development process do you think accessibility issues can occur? Why do you think developers own the issues?
• What qualifications or experience do your developers have which assure you they can be relied upon to deal with accessibility issues?
• What time and support have you provided to make sure your developers can act on any accessibility issues?

We use X framework which has accessibility 'off the shelf' or 'baked in'

• Where in X framework documentation is the explanation for how it has solved accessibility?
• What details has X framework provided about their approach to testing and the current benchmark that has been reached (for example, audit results and assistive technology testing or usability testing?)
• Can you show we me a demo page which clearly showcases the quality of the accessibility inherent in X framework?
• What happens if I were to combine several components from X framework to build an end-to-end service or journey - is it still accessible? How are you testing this?
• What happens if you need or chose to customise X framework with your own theme, brand identity, for example? How does this affect accessibility?

We have an accessibility plug-in / overlay so we are OK

• If you were concerned about security, would you feel comfortable outsourcing everything to one single 3rd-party tool?
• Have you validated this tool works with people with disabilities?
• Have you read the following information: Overlay Fact Sheet
• Do you have people with user experience roles? Do they think their expertise could be replaced with a single tool?

We've ran an automated testing tool (Wave, axe, Lighthouse etc) and fixed those issues so we are OK

• Are you aware that automated tools only identify approximately 30-40% of the total number of accessibility issues?
• Is this tool being run consistently across the whole digital estate?
• Are you running this tool before pages are published publicly? If not, how are you actively preventing issues from affecting your users /customers?

Feedback and questions

If this list has prompted questions, please speak with me -- i'm happy to offer any support and ideas I can.