Introduction: Moving Beyond the “One-Person Show” Most companies start their accessibility journey by hiring one “Accessibility Person” or tasking one developer with “fixing the site.” This is a recipe for burnout and failure. Accessibility is too big for one person; it needs to be a team sport. At Aditya Catalyst, we help organizations build what we call a Center of Excellence (CoE)—a structured way to make inclusion part of the company’s DNA.
What is a Center of Excellence?
It’s not necessarily a new department with a huge budget. It’s a group of “Champions” from across your existing teams:
- The Design Champion: Makes sure Figma templates have high contrast.
- The Engineering Champion: Sets up automated testing in the code pipeline.
- The Marketing Champion: Ensures social media videos have captions and alt-text.
- The Legal/Product Champion: Keeps track of changing laws and compliance deadlines.
The Power of “Shared Responsibility”
When everyone owns a small piece of accessibility, it stops feeling like a “chore” and starts feeling like a standard. A CoE creates a central place for resources, training, and documentation. It means that when your “Accessibility Person” goes on vacation or leaves the company, your progress doesn’t stop. You’ve built a system that sustains itself. At Aditya Catalyst, our goal is to help you build this “muscle” so that eventually, you don’t even need to think about it—it’s just the way you do business.