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Accessibility (a11y)

Definition

Accessibility -- often abbreviated a11y (the 11 stands for the letters between 'a' and 'y') -- means designing products so people with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities can use them effectively. In practice, this means following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which define three conformance levels: A (minimum), AA (standard target), and AAA (enhanced).

The legal side is real. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to digital products in the U.S., and the European Accessibility Act (EAA) takes effect across the EU in June 2025. Domino's Pizza lost a Supreme Court case in 2019 because its website and app were inaccessible to a blind user with a screen reader. Target settled an accessibility lawsuit for $6 million in 2008. These aren't edge cases anymore.

Why It Matters for Product Managers

PMs own the prioritization decision. Engineers and designers can flag accessibility gaps, but if a11y work never makes it onto the roadmap, it doesn't get done. The most common failure mode isn't malice -- it's a backlog where accessibility tickets perpetually sit below feature work.

The business case is straightforward. Microsoft found that building accessible features into Xbox's Adaptive Controller opened a $21.5 billion assistive technology market. More practically, accessibility improvements correlate with better SEO (semantic HTML helps crawlers), faster load times (simpler DOM structures), and higher conversion rates (clearer CTAs, better form labels). Curb cuts were designed for wheelchairs but everyone uses them -- the same principle applies to digital products.

For B2B products, accessibility is increasingly a procurement requirement. Enterprise buyers in government, education, and healthcare will reject your product if you can't demonstrate VPAT/WCAG compliance.

How It Works in Practice

  • Audit current state -- Run automated scans (axe DevTools, Lighthouse) to catch the low-hanging fruit: missing alt text, insufficient color contrast, unlabeled form fields. Automated tools catch roughly 30-40% of issues.
  • Manual testing -- Navigate your product using only a keyboard. Use a screen reader (VoiceOver on Mac, NVDA on Windows). This catches what automated scans miss: focus order problems, missing ARIA labels, and confusing navigation patterns.
  • Set a standard -- Commit to WCAG 2.1 AA as your baseline. Add accessibility acceptance criteria to your team's definition of done for new features.
  • Prioritize remediation -- Score existing issues by severity (users blocked vs. users inconvenienced) and fix critical blockers first. A single inaccessible checkout flow loses more revenue than a dozen contrast-ratio violations.
  • Test with real users -- Include people with disabilities in your usability testing sessions. Assistive technology users interact with your product in ways you can't predict from a checklist.

    • Common Pitfalls

  • Treating accessibility as a one-time project. It's an ongoing practice. Every new feature can introduce regressions. Build a11y checks into CI/CD pipelines.
  • Over-relying on automated tools. axe and Lighthouse are useful for catching obvious violations but miss context-dependent issues like whether alt text is actually meaningful or whether focus management makes sense after a modal opens.
  • Assuming "nobody with a disability uses our product." They might not use it because it's inaccessible. You're measuring survivor bias.
  • Deprioritizing a11y because it "doesn't move metrics." Track accessibility-related support tickets, failed enterprise deals, and legal risk separately. The ROI is there -- it just doesn't show up in a standard feature adoption dashboard.

    • Related Concepts

    Usability Testing is the most direct way to validate accessibility -- include assistive technology users in your research sessions. Heuristic Evaluation provides a structured way to audit interfaces against established principles, including Nielsen's "error prevention" and "flexibility" heuristics that overlap with a11y concerns. Design Thinking emphasizes empathy as the first step -- accessibility is empathy operationalized into product requirements.

    Related Terms

    Usability TestingDesign ThinkingHeuristic Evaluation

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What WCAG level should a PM target?+
    Most products should target WCAG 2.1 AA as a baseline. AAA conformance is ideal for government and healthcare but impractical for many consumer apps because it restricts design choices significantly. AA covers the critical requirements: sufficient color contrast (4.5:1 for normal text), keyboard navigability, and screen reader compatibility.
    How does accessibility affect product metrics?+
    Roughly 16% of the global population has a disability (WHO, 2023). Inaccessible products lose that entire segment. Beyond market size, accessibility improvements often boost usability for everyone -- captions help users in noisy environments, keyboard shortcuts help power users, and clear contrast helps anyone on a low-quality screen.
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