Making technology more equitable by shifting accessibility left
summary
Thoughtworks rebuilds its public site on Adobe Experience Manager aiming for WCAG 2.1 AA, finds the old site scores ~81% in Lighthouse and audits reveal common fixes: low contrast, ambiguous “click here” links, poor alt text, wrong heading hierarchy and decorative images. Teams shift accessibility left by adding disability overlays to personas, embedding accessibility acceptance criteria, training 100+ content authors, adding an AEM accessibility checkpoint and automating checks with linters and CI. Manual keyboard and screen reader testing remains mandatory; most work is done but maintenance continues.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Start
- 5:33Visual Impairment
- 6:56Closed Captions
- 7:32The Curb Cut Effect
- 15:33Persona Personas
- 16:33Disability Overlay
- 18:27Start with Accessibility
- 19:23Low Contrast Tags
- 20:05Alt Text
- 21:00Incorrect Heading Hierarchy
- 22:35Cross-Functional Requirement
- 25:13Use Only a Keyboard
- 28:47Color Contrast
- 31:25Who Is Responsible for Accessibility on Your Team
- 35:47Summary
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