At Airbnb, our vision is a world where anyone can belong anywhere. This includes not just our physical spaces, but our digital ones as well. We recognized that our product needed to provide a better experience for people with disabilities. Over the last few years, we started major efforts to improve the accessibility of our digital platforms across the company. We also know that accessibility is not a one-time effort; without consciously considering the needs of our entire community, efforts to provide a better experience for all users can go away with one new release. Our goal was to create a foundation of awareness, know-how, and accountability. We not only wanted people at Airbnb to know how to improve what already existed but also how to prevent creating barriers to inclusion in the first place.
When the Airbnb digital accessibility team first started, we knew that no matter how many people we had on our team, the accessibility team alone wouldn’t be able to individually review every design or code change. Additionally, the engineers on the accessibility team were web engineers, and not familiar enough with modern mobile app development to provide specific guidance in that area. We needed a way to scale, and a way to drum up support on different teams across different platforms and disciplines.Following the lead from practices established by an existing cross-platform team, we started a partners group dedicated to accessibility. We gathered engineers and designers from across the company to regularly join us and talk about organizational issues they were facing related to accessibility and common patterns in designs and components they noticed. The partners allowed us to have a pulse on what was going on across the company as well as share what they learned from us to others on their teams.
