A few months ago, a new policy document landed in my inbox. I opened it, began navigating through it with my screen reader, and hit a wall.

The document was inaccessible. There were entire sections I couldn't access.

There is always a moment in that situation where you feel the familiar weight of it: the quiet calculation of whether to say something, whether it is worth the effort, whether you will become the problem rather than the person flagging one. I know that feeling well. I reached out to the department head anyway.

I explained the issue and offered to speak with the team directly. Not to complain. To show them. The response came back quickly, and it was unambiguous: they wanted to get it right.

We set up a meeting. I took them through the experience as I actually live it: what happens when a screen reader encounters a document with no structure, no alt text, no logical reading order. Most of them had never seen it before. Not in the abstract sense of knowing accessibility matters, but in the concrete, slightly uncomfortable sense of watching it fail in real time.

We walked through the Accessibility Checker together. I explained not just what the errors were, but what they meant for someone navigating without sight. The team listened. They asked questions. They took notes.

That emotional energy is never nothing. The decision to speak up rather than absorb the friction quietly costs something. But the return compounds. That team will build differently now. Their templates will be more accessible. The next document they produce will be better than the last.

That is how the snowball starts. One conversation, one meeting, one team who finally sees what they could not see before.

And then it begins to roll.

Christiane Link Is Right About This

Christiane Link is a wheelchair-using business consultant and the founder of The Accessible Link, a newsletter on accessibility in aviation, transport, and travel. Her recent piece, “7 Ways to Champion Accessibility in Your Company,” is aimed at accessibility advocates who feel isolated inside their organisations.

Her opening line lands: “I’m the only one interested in accessibility at my company.”

It is a feeling a lot of us know. You are the one raising the flag, attending the training, pushing the agenda. It can feel like you are shouting into a room that has already moved on.

Christiane’s advice is direct and grounded. Recognise your allies. Document your progress. Talk to your bosses. Use your influence strategically. Keep asking the right questions. Stick to your values. Engage with the community.

Every one of those points is right. But running through them is a truth she only states in passing, and it deserves to be stated plainly.

“Remember, you are not alone in this mission, even if it feels like that sometimes. The progress made in accessibility over the years is a testament to the power of collective effort.”

Christiane Link, founder, The Accessible Link

The Resistance Is Rarer Than You Think

When accessibility advocates talk about the challenge of driving change, the focus is often on overcoming resistance. The budget that is not there. The stakeholder who does not see it as a priority. The project that ships without a review.

Resistance does exist. Christiane is right that you should pick your battles and handle pushback wisely.

But here is what I have found over years of having this conversation inside organisations.

Most people are not resistant to accessibility. They are curious about it. They have simply never been asked.

When you show a developer what a broken focus order actually means for a keyboard-only user, they lean forward. When you walk a designer through a colour blindness simulator and they see their own work differently for the first time, they do not walk away indifferent. When you tell someone in a planning meeting, casually, that one in five people in the UK has a disability, they write it down.

The problem is not resistance. The problem is silence.

The Snowball

Change in this space does not arrive as a mandate. It builds like a snowball rolling down a hill.

One conversation creates a curious colleague. That colleague fixes one thing in one project. A second colleague notices and asks why. A third person hears that exchange and wants to understand. Before long, accessibility is showing up in design reviews, in sprint planning, in onboarding: not because someone decreed it, but because it rolled there, gaining weight with every conversation.

I have watched this happen. Slowly at first. Then all at once.

Christiane’s seven points are not abstract principles. They are the actions that get the snowball moving. Recognising your allies tells you who to talk to first. Documenting progress gives you the examples that make those conversations land. Engaging with the community means the stories you tell are real and specific.

The snowball does not need a steep hill to get started. It needs someone willing to push.

Start Where You Are

You do not need a strategy. You do not need a budget. You do not need permission.

You need a conversation.

Pick a colleague you see regularly. Someone in product, or design, or communications. Mention one thing. Ask one question. Share one experience. Watch what happens.

Christiane’s article is worth reading in full, especially if you are at the point where it feels like you are carrying this alone. You are not. The allies are there. They have just not been rolled into it yet.

Takeaway

Accessibility culture does not come from policy alone. It comes from conversations that beget more conversations, each one pulling another person into the work. The snowball effect is real. Start rolling.

Source: 7 Ways to Champion Accessibility in Your Company, Christiane Link, The Accessible Link, published 30 June 2024.