Treat Accessibility Like a Product: A Practical Playbook for CEOs and Product Leaders

How many product roadmaps still treat accessibility as a compliance checkbox tucked at the end of delivery? With the European Accessibility Act now driving legal and market consequences across the EU, accessibility has become a strategic product problem — not just a legal one. If you are a CEO, CPO or head of engineering, this is your moment to move accessibility from afterthought to advantage.

1. Reframe accessibility as a product capability, not a checklist

Product leaders design capabilities that create measurable outcomes for users and the business. Accessibility should be framed the same way. That means defining clear customer outcomes (e.g. “users with visual impairment complete task X in under Y seconds”) and tracking them alongside retention, conversion or NPS.

Start by embedding accessibility success metrics into your product KPIs and portfolio reviews. Make accessibility part of discovery, not just delivery: involve users with disabilities in problem exploration, prototypes and early usability tests. Treat those learnings as input to the backlog — just like any other user insight.

2. Build cross-functional accessibility ownership

Autonomous product teams work best when they have the right skills in the room. Accessibility requires designers, engineers, product managers and QA to own outcomes together. Don’t silo it in a compliance team — create a clear model of shared ownership:

• Designers: pattern libraries and inclusive components.
• Engineers: automated tests, semantic HTML, ARIA, keyboard support.
• Product managers: goals, prioritisation and stakeholder alignment.
• QA and research: manual audits and representative user testing.

Microsoft’s long-running Inclusive Design efforts illustrate how systemic investment across disciplines produces better products and opens new markets — see Microsoft’s accessibility hub for concrete examples of features and tooling.

3. Bake accessibility into your development lifecycle

Accessibility must be visible in every phase: discovery, design, build, test and release. Practical levers include:

• Design systems with accessible components and predefined patterns.
• Automated CI checks for WCAG basics, plus periodic manual audits for complex flows.
• Accessibility acceptance criteria on every story, not just on epics.
• Representative user testing budgets in research plans (pay people fairly for their time).

Refer to the W3C’s WCAG guidelines as the technical baseline, but remember that passing automated checks is necessary, not sufficient. Manual testing and real user feedback uncover the problems that tools miss.

4. Treat compliance as opportunity: the European Accessibility Act is a market event

The European Accessibility Act harmonises rules across the EU and came into force to reduce market fragmentation. For companies operating in or selling into Europe, it’s no longer theoretical: non-compliance can mean fines, blocked sales and reputational damage.

But regulation is also a strategic tailwind. Organisations that get ahead of compliance gain improved UX for everyone, lower support costs and access to underserved customer segments. Forbes and specialist accessibility consultancies have detailed how the Act reshapes digital strategy across markets; use those resources to translate legal requirements into product workstreams.

5. Measure progress the way product teams measure outcomes

Replace vague promises with a small set of measurable indicators. Useful measures include:

• Percentage of key journeys audited for WCAG conformance.
• Time-to-fix for high-severity accessibility defects.
• Success rates in usability tests with assistive technology.
• Support ticket volumes originating from accessibility barriers.

Publish progress in the same forums where product OKRs are discussed. Visibility drives prioritisation.

A short, recent example

At Wall Street English, we’ve made accessibility a core part of our product strategy by building and maintaining the Hello Design System. Instead of patching accessibility across dozens of screens, we embed it in the system’s components, tokens, and documented patterns so accessible behavior is the default.

Key benefits:

• Foundation first: accessible components, color/typography tokens, focus styles and keyboard/ARIA patterns live in one place, used by every team.
• Centralized fixes: when we improve a component or add tests, the change propagates across the entire product—no repeated work on individual pages.
• Scalable assurance and business value: audits and automated tests target the system, speeding rollouts, reducing rework and risk, and delivering more consistent, inclusive experiences for learners.

If teams want details on what we’ve standardized and how it’s implemented, the Hello Design System documentation is the single source of truth.

Practical first moves for the executive team

• Commission a product-level accessibility health check covering top user journeys and platforms.
• Mandate accessibility acceptance criteria for all new features across the portfolio.
• Create a cross-functional bounded team to remediate the highest-impact issues within 90 days.
• Fund a small design system sprint to create accessible primitives for the next six months of delivery.

Accessibility is not a nicety; it is a systemic product capability that reduces risk and unlocks growth. Move beyond compliance semantics and treat accessible design like any other strategic product investment: define outcomes, assign ownership, measure relentlessly and iterate. The tools and legal frameworks exist — now it’s about leadership and engineering discipline to turn obligation into competitive advantage.

Start today by asking two questions at your next product review: what customer outcomes does this deliver for people with disabilities, and how will we measure it? If you can answer both, you’re on the right track. If you can’t, make that the sprint goal.