Product owners and managers must communicate accessibility requirements early in a project's lifecycle. They must ensure team members understand their responsibilities and maintain accountability for creating accessible products. Committing to accessibility with intention while maintaining transparency enhances trust in government. Ultimately, it also drives innovation and broadens service reach, while reducing technical debt and saving costs by avoiding rework.
Your Responsibilities
- Understand WCAG, WAI-ARIA, and stay up-to-date on best practice for accessible design.
- Integrate accessibility into product planning and prioritize it from the project's inception and throughout improvement cycles.
- Encourage a consistent approach to accessibility testing that utilizes assistive technology; if possible, this testing should include native users of assistive technology.
- Embed accessibility acceptance criteria into personas and user stories.
- Ensure that the bug tracking system contains a category for accessibility.
- Ensure prioritization and a review system for accessibility defects.
- Include compliance with agency accessibility policies in the “definition of done” for all product increments.
- Incorporate automated and manual accessibility testing into development sprints.
- Use automated testing tools, such as WAVE and Siteimprove.
- Ensure that maintenance releases are re-inspected for accessibility.
- Require Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs) for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products and purchase only technology that is accessible and compatible with assistive technology.
- Ensure documents and presentations are created with accessibility in mind.