Posted on by Henny Swan in Strategy
Whether at the start of your accessibility journey or partway through it, complex organisations often face strategic, organisational, and external barriers that can make scaling accessibility difficult.
These challenges are common, but with the right culture, good communication, planning, and collaboration between teams, accessibility can scale in ways that are both effective and sustainable.
A good starting point for scaling sustainable accessibility is to identify your biggest pain points and look at how to reduce or remove them. These often fall into three areas:
In this post, we explore organisational realities and what it takes to build a culture of inclusion, open communication, and collaboration across teams and processes.
If you’re looking for a standards-based framework for embedding accessibility into your organisation, EN 17161: Design for All offers useful guidance. Our post Understanding EN 17161 Design for All explains the standard in more detail and is mapped to each of the sections that follow.
Organisational realities such as culture, departmental politics, siloed teams, and budget constraints can all affect how accessibility is implemented, regardless of the strategic foundations in place. When tackled head-on, they can help unlock lasting change rather than act as a blocker.
By building a culture of accessibility, you shape how inclusion is understood and prioritised and whether it’s seen as everyone’s responsibility or left to a few specialists. It also influences whether teams think of accessibility as a driver of innovation or a compliance burden.
An inclusive culture goes far beyond product teams. It’s a shared mindset across the organisation, reflected in many different teams, for example:
Understanding EN 17161 Design for All contains more details of the following clauses:
Scaling accessibility often requires shifts in mindset, habits, and ways of working across the organisation. This kind of change doesn’t happen automatically; it needs time, coordination, and clear communication.
That’s where dedicated change management and internal communication functions can make a big difference. They help teams understand not just what needs to change, but why it matters and how to make it happen.
There are a few ways to support change more effectively:
We’ve seen the value of change management firsthand when working with a global freight company at the very start of their accessibility journey. With no previous accessibility policies, processes, or training in place, the organisation needed more than just technical recommendations — it needed a shift in mindset and ways of working, starting at the very top with leadership.
We’ve also worked with change management at a broadcaster with many years of accessibility experience and expertise as they went through organisational change. The change manager played a critical role in preserving accessibility knowledge during team restructures, ensuring it wasn’t lost as people changed roles or left the organisation. They helped embed accessibility into new ways of working, updated internal processes and training, and made sure accessibility remained part of the conversation as new leadership and priorities emerged.
Understanding EN 17161 Design for All contains more details of the following clauses:
Departmental politics can have a significant impact on how accessibility is prioritised, funded, and implemented. Competing goals, unclear ownership, or internal rivalry can slow progress and create unnecessary barriers. Even when leadership support exists, the dynamics between teams can determine whether accessibility work moves forward or gets deprioritised.
This often happens when accessibility sits between teams, for example, when product, design, or engineering each assumes another team is responsible. Without shared priorities and clear escalation routes, accessibility decisions can be delayed, diluted, or reversed, making long-term progress difficult.
There are a few ways to manage departmental politics more effectively:
Understanding EN 17161 Design for All contains more details of the following clauses:
Even in organisations where departmental priorities are aligned, accessibility can still be slowed down by teams working in silos. These are often not political divides, but structural ones caused by different systems, workflows, or locations that limit collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Siloed teams can unknowingly duplicate work, overlook accessibility requirements, or develop inconsistent approaches. People may be solving the same problems in different ways — or not solving them at all. This results in fragmented user experiences and uneven accessibility maturity across products and services.
There are a few ways to break down silos and improve consistency:
Many organisations we work with have an accessibility champions network that can go a long way to connecting otherwise dispersed groups of people. How An Accessibility Champions Network Started The BBC’s Story by Gareth Ford-Williams offers lots of useful insights. Another great resource is the Champions of Accessibility Network, where companies and people share resources and ideas for running accessibility champion networks.
Understanding EN 17161 Design for All contains more details of the following clauses:
Budget constraints are one of the most common organisational realities. Ideally, budgeting cycles include accessibility as standard alongside security, performance, or outsourced design and development support. If not, start early by making the business case for accessibility.
When planning your budget, consider costs such as:
As Felicity Miners-Jones explains in her accessible recruitment post, it's important to make each stage of the hiring process through to onboarding and beyond accessible so that you can attract the best candidates from a range of backgrounds and disabilities.
Understanding EN 17161 Design for All contains more details of the following clauses:
Outsourcing extends accessibility responsibilities beyond your direct control. To avoid accessibility being diluted or lost, requirements must be built into procurement and third-party management processes from the start.
Whether you’re buying tools, commissioning content, or contracting design and development services, procurement teams and product leads should work together to include clear accessibility expectations in briefs, selection criteria, and contracts. As part of the selection process, vendors should be asked to provide accessibility statements, test or assessment results to demonstrate they have met accessibility standards.
Once selected, product leads must ensure third parties continue to deliver against those expectations. This means monitoring quality, building accessibility into acceptance criteria, and following up where issues arise.
We've worked with customers where we've not only trained their User Experience and Design teams, but also their supplier network who support them with user research and design. This ensures there is a shared mindset, knowledge, and language they can all use when collaborating on projects.
Understanding EN 17161 Design for All contains more details of the following clauses:
Scaling accessibility in organisations can be complex, but with the right culture, good communication, planning, and collaboration between teams, accessibility can scale in ways that are both effective and sustainable.
By taking a structured, joined-up approach, combining strategic foundations and careful management of external factors, you can scale accessibility in a way that delivers long-term value for your teams, your business, and your customers.
Learn more about how TetraLogical can help your organisation with our Consultancy service.
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