Did you know that accessibility is a leadership reality?
Did you know that over one in four adults in North America lives with a disability that affects digital use? That group includes customers, employees, candidates, and leaders. When platforms are not accessible, organizations quietly exclude millions from everyday work, services, and decisions, often without seeing the full scale, reach, or cumulative impact of that exclusion.
Why this keeps happening
Most organizations still treat accessibility as a technical detail. It sits outside leadership conversations. Decisions focus on speed, features, or cost. Ownership stays unclear. Signals from the top rarely frame accessibility as a shared responsibility tied to how the organization operates.
What this signals
This pattern shows how exclusion becomes invisible. Barriers feel normal because they are rarely surfaced. Issues appear late, often through complaints or workarounds. Accessibility exists on the margins, discussed only when something breaks or someone speaks up.
Why this matters to leaders
When exclusion stays unseen, leaders make decisions with incomplete information. Risk grows quietly. Culture sends mixed messages about who truly belongs. This is not about lacking expertise. It is about lacking visibility into who is being left out.
Where leaders encounter this
This often appears during platform approvals, roadmap planning, and timeline trade-offs. Accessibility remains unseen when success is measured without understanding who can fully participate.
Closing reflection
Accessibility is not a niche concern. It reflects what leaders choose to notice.
What might your digital choices be quietly signaling about who your organization is designed for?
Take the Inclusive Leadership Self-Assessment Test
If you’re curious to see where your organization sits on the Digital Accessibility Maturity Model – and what that means for your next leadership decisions – you can take a short, leadership-focused survey to find out.
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About Denis Boudreau
Denis Boudreau is a consultant, trainer, and speaker specializing in digital accessibility and disability inclusion. He works with organizational leaders who want to equip their teams with the skills to create accessible websites and digital products – so no one is left behind. A Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA), Denis has trained thousands of web professionals over the past 20+ years and delivered hundreds of workshops in both English and French. He has helped leading brands like Netflix, Salesforce, and Victoria’s Secret embed accessibility into their digital strategies, empowering them to meet legal obligations, improve user experience, and connect with more people, more effectively.