Accessibility unlocked: People, tools, and what's next | Evolve Digital Toronto 2026
Summary
This panel at EvolveDigital Toronto 2026, moderated by Fran Wyllie (Accessibility Specialist and Dev Manager at Northern), brought together four accessibility leaders: Jeevan Bains (Rogers Communications), Niki Ramesh (CBC), Pina D'Intino (Aequum Global Access / IAAP), and Juan Olarte (Digita11y Accessible). The conversation covered accessibility strategy, training, AI integration, and sustaining organizational commitment.
On strategy, Niki Ramesh described beginning her tenure at CBC by mapping the organization's accessibility maturity across pillars including overall strategy, standards, roles and accountabilities, product planning, procurement, and training. Jeevan Bains emphasized tying accessibility directly into corporate strategy — framing it as a driver of revenue, quality, and customer service rather than a side initiative. Pina D'Intino argued that accessibility should be treated with the same organizational urgency as security and privacy: if it is not a leadership priority that is both spoken and acted on, it will not stick. Juan Olarte stressed making the business case: accessible products reduce development bugs, shorten time-to-market, and serve users with and without disabilities alike.
On training, the panel identified several reasons why accessibility training commonly fails: employees do not understand their specific role in accessibility, training is treated as a one-time onboarding checkbox rather than an ongoing practice, and it is rarely delivered by people with lived experience of disability. Pina noted that role-based training is essential — a developer needs to know what technical standards they must meet, not the full legislative landscape. The group agreed that leadership buy-in requires framing accessibility in terms of cost avoidance: remediating inaccessible products after the fact is far more expensive than embedding accessibility from the start. Project managers were highlighted as a frequently overlooked but critical group who need accessibility training to advocate for it with clients from the outset.
On AI, the discussion was nuanced. Juan Olarte cautioned that AI testing tools currently catch only 25–35% of accessibility issues; tools claiming 100% coverage are unreliable. AI is particularly weak at detecting cognitive and neurodivergent accessibility barriers. Pina pointed out that AI training data skews toward mainstream patterns, creating a significant gap for disability-related edge cases. At the same time, Niki described CBC using AI to help journalists produce accessible content at scale — generating alternative text for images (outperforming human-written descriptions in a sample of 80–100) and supporting caption review workflows. Juan outlined a near-future vision of agentic AI that renders interfaces dynamically based on a user's disability profile and executes tasks (like booking an accessible hotel) on their behalf. The group agreed that human validation by people with lived experience remains non-negotiable in any AI-assisted accessibility workflow.
On sustaining accessibility, the panel identified measurement, feedback loops, and celebration of wins as critical. Pina urged organizations to go beyond compliance metrics and track employee belonging, customer retention, and user satisfaction as accessibility indicators. Niki and Jeevan both described success stories where accessibility became embedded in corporate strategy independently of any single champion — the signal that the work has truly taken root. Resources recommended for sharing wins included the Leaders for Accessibility newsletter, the Champions of Accessibility Network (CAN) LinkedIn group, and the Drupal Slack accessibility channel. On the legislative landscape, the panel assessed Ontario's AODA as groundbreaking but under-enforced, and the federal Accessible Canada Act as similarly hampered by a lack of penalty enforcement — a challenge they noted is not unique to Canada.
Key Takeaways
- •Before setting an accessibility strategy, map your organization's current maturity across pillars: strategy, standards and roles, product planning, design and development processes, procurement, and training.
- •Accessibility must be tied to corporate strategy — framed in terms of revenue, quality, and risk — not treated as a compliance side project, or it will not receive sustained leadership support.
- •Treat accessibility with the same organizational urgency as security and privacy: compromised accessibility compromises user privacy, independence, and confidentiality.
- •Role-based training is essential: developers need to know their specific technical responsibilities, not the full legislative landscape. Training content should match the audience's actual job.
- •Remediation of inaccessible products is far more costly than building accessibly from the start — use this as the primary financial argument for leadership investment in training and design standards.
- •Project managers are a critical and often overlooked training audience; they set the scope of projects and must raise accessibility as a requirement with clients from day one.
- •Automated accessibility testing tools currently catch only 25–35% of issues; any vendor claiming 100% coverage should not be trusted. Human validation by people with lived experience remains mandatory.
- •When using AI for accessibility tasks, narrow its context window with curated, accurate documentation — including design systems, standards, and lived-experience examples — to reduce bad recommendations.
- •Measure accessibility success beyond defect counts: track employee sense of belonging, customer retention, return rates, and user satisfaction scores disaggregated by disability community feedback.
- When accessibility improvements are made, actively publicize them through disability advocacy groups, industry newsletters, and community channels — the disability community rarely hears about wins.
Transcript
Okay, looks like we've got a pretty cool room here. Thanks everybody for coming out. So good to see all your smiling faces. Thank you. Thank you. Um I am so so excited today to be moderating our accessibility panel. Um if we haven't met already, my name is Fran. I'm a development manager and accessibility specialist at Northern. But more importantly, let me give a quick intro to our lovely panelists. Um so starting here on my right, we have Jieven. Jven is a manager in accessibility at Rogers. S...
