Triage and Prioritize Accessibility Issues

After accessibility issues are discovered -- whether through audits, testing, or user feedback -- teams must assess their severity, impact, and urgency. This process, known as triage, is followed by prioritization, where decisions are made about which issues must be addressed immediately, which can wait, and which may never be resolved. This intervention ensures that accessibility is treated as essential, not optional.

Role in the ENABLE Model

Triage and Prioritize Accessibility Issues is the sixth act of care in the ENABLE model. When neglected, it allows known barriers to persist, creating inequities downstream. When embraced, it becomes a turning point for institutional accountability.

Why It Matters

Without triage and prioritization, accessibility issues become invisible again -- buried in backlogs or deprioritized in favor of perceived "higher impact" work. This delays remediation, limits usability, and communicates to disabled users that their needs are non-essential.

Examples

In the news

Justice Department Enters into a Settlement Agreement with Peapod to Ensure that Peapod Grocery Delivery Website is Accessible to Individuals with Disabilities - Press Release (November 17, 2014)
-- Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice

• The Peapod ADA settlement requires "modification of bug fix priority policies" so that accessibility-related bugs are prioritized equivalently to other functionality bugs: "remedied with the same level of priority (e.g., speed, resources used to remediate) as any other equivalent loss of function for individuals without disabilities."

H&R Block Consent Decree: Accessibility Bugs as Production Issues (March 2014)
-- U.S. Department of Justice

• The H&R Block consent decree requires the company to treat accessibility barriers as bugs that must be tracked, triaged, and remediated on timelines -- not downgraded as feature requests. This settlement established that accessibility issues deserve the same prioritization as any other production bug affecting core functionality.

ADA Lawsuits Surge to 5,100+ in 2025, Up 20% from 2024 (2025)
-- UsableNet

• Web accessibility lawsuits continue rising, with over 5,100 filed in 2025. Many target issues that were known but deprioritized: 36% of sued companies had annual revenue exceeding $25 million, suggesting they had resources to fix barriers but chose not to. Proper triage and prioritization of known accessibility bugs could prevent both exclusion and litigation.

• Classifying screen reader failures as “P1” blockers during QA
• Tagging accessibility bugs as “must fix” in sprint planning
• Escalating feedback from disabled users into engineering backlogs
• Assigning severity levels in automated test outputs (e.g., Pa11y, Axe)
• Including accessibility bugs in the product roadmap and OKRs

Care Sounds Like

“We can't ship our voice AI if it doesn't work with people who stutter.”
“Accessibility failures are not tech debt -- they're production bugs.”
“We're prioritizing fixing keyboard traps ahead of the new feature launch.”

Neglect Sounds Like

"How did blind people before get around? I mean Uber is [Sic] only really been around for like 12 years. Get back to that" -- @trustme2001 (2024)
“We'll get to accessibility after launch.”
“Let's track it in the backlog, but it's not a blocker.”
“Only one user reported that issue, so it's not a priority.”

Real-World Scenario

A company building a mobile banking app receives feedback that blind users can't transfer money using screen readers. The QA team logs the bug, but product leadership marks it as “low priority.” The app launches with the issue unresolved. Later, an advocacy group files a complaint under the ADA. Had the issue been triaged and prioritized appropriately, the barrier could have been removed before release -- saving legal costs and, more importantly, preventing exclusion.