Henny Swan, director at Tetralogical, with some great advice for those whom accessibility responsibility often falls to.
Henny advises:
On responsibility: accessibility is everyone’s responsibility all the time, not just your responsibility all the time. Establish that you can support accessibility, but others also need to do accessibility work and make accessibility-related decisions.
On relationship-building: build relationships with decision-makers with authority to embed accessibility and practitioners ready to build up their skills.
On sustainability and scalability: look for ways to scale what you do through demonstration and documentation.
On expectations: manage expectations and be clear about what you can do. You can give advice, but teams themselves need to make informed decsions. Also – you won’t know everyting, and sometimes you need the help of expert consultancy.
On having support to hand: build a support network through community groups and mentor programmes. I’ve also taken Henny’s advice and subscribed to the WebAIM accessibility discussion list.