Did you know that what isn’t tested gets missed?
Did you know that many accessibility issues can be identified through basic testing, yet most teams never test for them at all? What gets tested gets improved. What is never tested quietly degrades. Without intentional testing, accessibility problems remain invisible, accumulate over time, and surface only when they become urgent or costly.
Why this keeps happening
Accessibility is rarely embedded into standard testing practices. Leaders assume quality checks already cover it. Teams test what they are asked to test. When accessibility is not named as an expectation, it falls outside normal workflows and accountability structures.
What this signals
This pattern signals how invisibility becomes self-reinforcing. If issues are never measured, they appear not to exist. Silence is interpreted as success. Over time, inaccessibility blends into the background until something forces it into view.
Why this matters to leaders
When accessibility is not tested, leaders receive an incomplete picture of quality and risk. Decisions rely on partial signals. Issues feel sudden, even though they developed gradually. This is not a tooling problem. It is a visibility problem shaped by what leadership chooses to measure.
Where leaders encounter this
This often shows up in quality reports, release approvals, and performance dashboards. Accessibility stays absent when success metrics focus on defects, speed, or uptime without reflecting who can actually use what is delivered.
Closing reflection
Accessibility does not fail all at once. It erodes quietly when it is never checked.
What aspects of your digital experience might be declining simply because they are not being measured?
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.