Why Ignoring Accessibility in Your Communication Will Not Get You Fired

Making your work accessible to people with hearing or visual impairments will make it easier for everyone to understand.

In most workplaces, communication should be clear, concise, and professional. Yet while grammar and slide design get attention, accessibility for those with visual or hearing impairments is often ignored. Why? Most people aren’t fired for poor communication, especially when it comes to accessibility.

That doesn’t mean accessibility isn’t important. It is. But preventing termination, not striving for excellence, is often what drives workplace communication habits. And when the bar is just “good enough to keep your job,” accessibility gets left behind.

The Low Risk of Consequence

Few employees have ever been fired for having PowerPoint slides without alt text or for not including captions in their videos. In fact, many managers don’t notice these gaps unless someone points them out. And it’s often someone who is directly impacted.

In the absence of complaints or legal pressure, accessibility just isn’t seen as a priority.

This is especially true in organization cultures where “checking the box” is rewarded more than thoughtful communication. In particular, technical specialists such as engineers or accountants may be applauded for meeting deadlines and using corporate templates, even if your documents are impossible to read with a screen reader or your audio content is inaccessible to those with hearing loss.

The Comfort of the Status Quo

Many professionals simply don’t think about accessibility unless someone challenges them to do so. The default is to continue doing what you have always done. After all, if no one is complaining, why fix it?

The workplace often treats accessibility as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. Business culture tends to reward minimal compliance over innovation. If your document looks professional and you’re not in legal trouble, it’s considered a win. But accessibility should not be viewed as optional. It should be seen as basic respect for your full audience.

Between 8 and 25 percent of executive leadership have difficulty seeing or hearing. Can you afford to overlook this audience?

What About Getting Ahead?

Some people assume that being inclusive in their communication might help them stand out or earn a promotion. After all, most Fortune 500 companies, state governments, and the federal government have accessibility standards, especially as it relates to their websites and publications.

While that should be true, it often isn’t. When it comes to accessibility requirements, it is the exception and not the rule that they trickle down through senior and middle management.

Rightly or wrongly, most promotions are based on leadership visibility, project delivery, or team management.

There is no weighting for whether your PDFs are accessible to people with visual or hearing impairments.

That’s why “not getting fired” remains the more common motivator. And that’s part of the problem. When the goal is simply to stay out of trouble, there’s little incentive to learn how to make presentations, emails, and documents truly accessible for the visual or hearing impaired.

Accessibility Is Not Just a Technical Issue

Accessibility is often framed as a technical checklist. Use enough contrast, add captions, provide transcripts, avoid color-only meaning, and so on. But at its core, accessibility is about empathy. It's about understanding that not everyone experiences your communication the same way.

Someone with low vision may rely on a screen reader, and poor heading structure or missing alternative text makes their experience frustrating. Someone who is deaf or hard of hearing may depend on captions or transcripts—and without them, your message is literally lost.

The FINESSE Accessibility Checklist

Ignoring these needs doesn’t mean you're a bad person. It may just mean no one has told you how to do better. But continuing to ignore them, especially once you’ve been made aware, reflects poorly on your professionalism and care for others.

A Shift in Mindset Is Needed

Making your communication more accessible won’t get you fired or promotion in most cases. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing. In fact, you’ll find that by making your work better for those with hearing or visual impairments, you will make your work more understandable for everyone.

Instead of asking, “Will I get in trouble if I skip this?” try asking, “Who might I be excluding if I don’t include this?” That shift in mindset is what separates a bare-minimum communicator from a truly effective one.

Accessibility may not be the reason you lose your job, but making your communication more accessible could be the reason someone else gets to do theirs.

That’s leadership. And that’s worth doing. Even if no one’s watching.