Team accessibility check-in

Take time to check in on accessibility

Accessibility is not something to think about only at the end of a project or when you are preparing for an audit. This guide helps teams pause together, reflect on the accessibility of their work, products and services, and agree practical improvements they can make next.

The aim isn't to prove that everything is perfect. It is to notice barriers early, learn from what you are seeing and keep making things easier for more people to use.

How to run the check-in

Set aside around 30–60 minutes and involve people from across the team. You do not need to be an accessibility expert to take part.

Think about the work you have delivered recently, what is currently in progress and anything you are planning next.

You can discuss the questions together, capture observations on a shared board or document, and finish by agreeing a small number of actions.

Try to include different perspectives across design, content, technology, delivery, operations and customer-facing roles where possible.

1. Who are we designing for?

Start with people, rather than standards.

• Who needs to use what we are creating?

• Who might find it harder to access or use?

• Have we considered people with permanent, temporary and situational access needs?

• Have we considered cognitive, sensory, physical and communication barriers?

• Are we making assumptions about people's confidence, literacy, language, devices or digital skills?

• Who have we not heard from yet?

• Have disabled people or people with access needs been involved in the design or testing?

Ask: Who could currently be excluded from this experience?

2. What barriers have we noticed?

Think about the whole experience, not just the website or digital interface.

• Is anything difficult to understand?

• Are instructions clear and easy to follow?

• Are people being asked to remember too much information?

• Are there unnecessary steps, decisions or distractions?

• Do images have meaningful alternative text where needed?

• Are videos captioned and is important audio information available another way?

• Are colours, contrast, text size and layout easy to perceive?

• Do forms explain what information is needed and how to fix mistakes?

• Is there anything that moves, flashes, disappears or changes unexpectedly?

• Is there a clear alternative when somebody cannot use the primary channel?

Ask: Where might someone get stuck, confused or be forced to ask for help?

3. What does the wider service feel like?

Accessibility does not stop at the screen.

Consider the journey between websites, emails, letters, telephone calls, appointments or even physical spaces. Maybe your service also has forms, payment processes or authentication checks? Every part of the overall experience, or journey, should be tied together without friction for the customer. Some questions for you team to explore:

• Does information remain consistent between channels?

• Can people move between digital and non-digital channels easily?

• Are accessible alternatives genuinely equivalent?

• Are we creating additional work for someone because of an access need?

• Does somebody have to repeatedly explain their needs?

• What happens when the expected journey does not work?

Ask: If someone cannot use one part of the service, what happens next?

4. What are we doing well?

Accessibility check-ins should identify good practice as well as problems. As a team:

• What have we changed recently that has made something easier to use?

• What accessibility decisions worked particularly well?

• What have users responded positively to?

• What have we learned through testing or feedback?

• Is there something another team could reuse?

• What should we make part of our normal way of working?

Ask: What should we keep doing?

5. What are we unsure about?

Teams do not need to know every answer.

Capture:

• things you need to test

• assumptions that need checking

• questions requiring specialist advice

• areas where user research is needed

• accessibility requirements that are unclear

• technical issues that need further investigation.

Ask: What are we currently guessing about?

Turning uncertainty into a question is often the beginning of improving accessibility.

6. What have people told us?

This is your opportunity to explore and be curious about insights from outside of your team.

Consider how insights from complaints, contact-centre data or analytics may help you to understand where people may experience challenges when using your product or service. You may also have access to user research, support requests or staff observations.

Ask:

• Are people repeatedly asking the same question?

• Where are people abandoning a process?

• What requires avoidable support?

• Are particular groups experiencing more difficulty?

• Have we acted on previous accessibility feedback?

Sometimes the strongest signal of an accessibility problem is not someone saying “this is inaccessible”. It is someone saying “I couldn't work out what to do.”

7. What should we change next?

Finish the session by turning the conversation into action.

Ask the team:

Stop

What are we doing that could create barriers?

Start

What could we introduce that would improve accessibility?

Continue

What is already working well and should become normal practice?

Keep the actions achievable. Improving one important part of a service is more useful than producing a long accessibility action list that nobody has time to complete.

One final question

If someone with an access need used our work tomorrow, how confident are we that they could achieve what they came here to do independently, with dignity and without unnecessary effort?

If the answer is “we don't know”, that is useful too.

It tells you what to explore next.