The call to ship something inaccessible often sits above your pay grade, which can be hard to accept when you care about doing things right. I’ve raised accessibility issues clearly, with receipts, and watched them get deprioritised anyway.
It was disheartening and I found myself questioning whether it was even worth raising issues when I knew they were unlikely to be addressed.
I was discouraged by leadership at a company that simply didn’t have the accessibility maturity in place. “Sometimes it’s just not possible.” “This is a legacy codebase.” And the classic: “We can’t fix everything.”
What I’ve learned is that getting overruled doesn’t mean getting ignored forever. How you respond in those moments matters. So when it feels like you have no control, use what you can.