Three quick ways to shift left and fix accessibility issues sooner

Digital accessibility is essential to the software design lifecycle (SDLC). You can’t build products that meet compliance requirements without it, and if your product fails to meet accessibility standards, you face stalled sales, loss of market share, legal and financial risk, and more.

Unfortunately, however, digital accessibility is often an afterthought—if it’s thought of at all. And that’s a problem. Being reactive about digital accessibility (discovering issues only after they’ve already made it into the product) increases cost, slows down your teams, frustrates your users, and can create barriers for people with disabilities.

By shifting digital accessibility checks earlier in your development workflow—while you’re building, not after the fact—you catch issues when they’re easiest and cheapest to fix. That’s what it means to “shift left”: moving your testing and quality practices earlier in the SDLC, so you can fix problems before they spread.