by Evan Dobbie
National AccessAbility Week, often shortened to NAAW, is an important moment to recognize the contributions of people with disabilities, celebrate progress, and raise awareness about the barriers that still exist in our communities, workplaces, services, and systems. It gives organizations a reason to pause, listen, learn, and highlight accessibility as a shared responsibility.
But accessibility can’t just be treated as a calendar event.
A week of awareness is valuable, but awareness on its own doesn’t remove a step at an entrance, fix an inaccessible website, improve a hiring process, make a meeting more inclusive, or ensure that people with disabilities are meaningfully involved in decisions that affect them. Real accessibility requires practice. It requires accountability. It requires year-round attention to the environments we create and the assumptions we carry.
Too often, accessibility is approached as something extra: a compliance checklist, a communications theme, or a one-time accommodation made only after someone asks. That approach puts the burden on disabled people to identify barriers, request fixes, and explain why inclusion matters. A more accountable approach asks different questions from the start: Who might be excluded by this decision? What barriers are built into this space, process, policy, or technology? Who has been consulted? What will change as a result?
Year-round accessibility means moving from good intentions to measurable action. It means building accessibility into planning, budgets, timelines, procurement, design, hiring, training, customer service, and evaluation. It means recognizing that barriers are not always obvious to those who do not experience them. They may be physical, digital, attitudinal, procedural, financial, sensory, or social. They may appear in the layout of a room, the format of a document, the speed of a conversation, the wording of a job posting, or the lack of flexible options.
Accountability also means listening to people with disabilities not only when there is a problem, but when decisions are being shaped. Consultation should not be symbolic. It should be respectful, compensated when appropriate, and connected to real authority and follow-through. People with lived experience should be partners in identifying priorities, testing solutions, and evaluating whether changes actually work.
Accessibility isn’t about perfection. No organization, community, or individual will get everything right all at once. But practice means returning to the work consistently. It means being willing to notice what is not working, accept feedback without defensiveness, and make concrete improvements. It means understanding that inclusion is not achieved through statements alone, but through repeated choices.
NAAW can be a starting point, a reminder, and a spark. It can help bring attention to the work that must be done. But the real measure of commitment is what happens after the week ends.
So here is a simple challenge for this month: choose one barrier to identify, one person or group to consult, and one change to make. Start small if needed, but start with intention. It could be anything from remembering to include alternative text with an image, to being mindful of the placement of signage around your workplace.
Accessibility isn’t just a week. It is a practice, and every practical step brings us closer to a more inclusive future.
What steps will you take this year to keep a focus on accessibility and inclusion? Let us know in the comments, or email us at info@reachability.org.
