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On January 28, 2025, I took part in a panel debate on building accessible apps — and it's a conversation I'd been wanting to have for a long time. Accessibility isn't a nice-to-have or a compliance checkbox. It's the difference between someone being able to use what you've built or being locked out entirely. I got to say that out loud, in front of an audience, and it felt important.
The debate pushed into the real friction points — where accessibility gets deprioritised, where teams don't know where to start, and why "we'll fix it later" almost never happens. I came prepared to be direct about that. Good intentions don't ship accessible products. Deliberate practice, shared ownership, and building it in from day one does.
Participating in this kind of forum matters to me beyond the talk itself. The more we normalise accessibility as a core engineering and design concern — not a specialist afterthought — the better the products we collectively ship. This was one small push in that direction.