From the course: Accessibility-First Design

Cross-discipline collaboration and T-shaped knowledge

From the course: Accessibility-First Design

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Cross-discipline collaboration and T-shaped knowledge

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- Accessibility is determined by all stages and disciplines in product development. An accessibility-first design workflow makes the most of the team's collective expertise to implement accessibility considerations throughout the process. In order to make the most of this collective expertise, it's important to have a combination of deep knowledge in your discipline and bridging context into the related areas of product work. This is known as T-shaped knowledge, and teams that have T-shaped knowledge are able to collaborate more effectively than team members with siloed experience. Cross-discipline collaboration throughout the process is the best way to build T-shaped knowledge in a team. This is because each member gains experience with the challenges and opportunities of each discipline. For example, when creating written content, it's important to be familiar with front-end development techniques like semantic markup and heading levels. This allows you to properly structure meaningful content from the start. When designing the look of a button, it's important to know the native interactive states buttons provide and design visually-distinct versions for each state. These interactive states can then be conveniently styled in code. An effective way to foster a learning culture around accessibility is to involve everyone in accessibility testing throughout the whole product development process. As we'll explore, accessibility testing can and should be performed by all roles, technical and non-technical alike, and it's a great way to build shared experience and empathy.

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