8.5How to Frame Accessibility in Business Conversations

For Engineering Leadership

"Accessibility testing is cheaper to implement proactively than to remediate reactively. Running axe-core on every PR costs us nothing in CI time and prevents violations that could result in lawsuits costing $10K-$500K each."

For Product Leadership

"The EAA is now in effect. If our product is sold in the EU without WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, we risk market access denial. Our competitors are already investing in accessibility."

For Legal/Compliance

"We have automated WCAG 2.1 AA scanning in our CI pipeline that catches 30-40% of violations automatically. Here is the latest report showing our compliance posture. I recommend quarterly manual audits to cover the remaining 60% that automation cannot detect."