3 Key Takeaways:
- Cultural Shift Toward Usability: There has been a notable shift in customer focus from compliance to usability, which reflects a deeper understanding of the importance of accessibility. This shift is evident across companies, from startups to Fortune 500 firms, and highlights the growing recognition of accessibility as a priority.
- Technological Advancements for Accessibility: The availability of new technologies, like haptics on mobile devices and modern browser APIs, has made it easier to build highly accessible products. These advancements, combined with tools like AI and large language models, open up new possibilities for improving accessibility across various industries.
- Balancing Innovation and Accessibility: While accessibility can sometimes be seen as slowing down innovation, it's crucial for companies to integrate it early in product development. This prevents costly retrofitting later on and ensures that accessibility is part of the broader strategy for achieving product-market fit, not just an afterthought.
Today I’m talking to my friend Øystein Moseng, the chief product officer at Highcharts.
How did you start to focus on accessibility at Highcharts?
Our journey with accessibility evolved in stages. It started with our product, focusing on basics like data tables and color vision issues, which is key since we're a data visualization company serving developers. About a decade ago, things accelerated when Ted Geese, an accessibility manager at Elsevier, approached us. They were a customer and wanted to go beyond compliance, focusing on usability in database accessibility. We’ve been collaborating ever since, continuously innovating.
Their need for accessibility taught us a lot—why they wanted it, what it took to provide it, and how we needed to evolve as an organization. As we started working directly with people with disabilities, we saw the real impact, shifting our motivation from business to truly understanding the human impact. Today, accessibility is about much more than just a feature request—it's about improving lives.
Can you talk about your journey at Highcharts, from engineer to head of product, and what role accessibility played?
It’s funny because I never wanted to get into management. I loved the problem-solving aspect of engineering, just working on elegant solutions with a whiteboard. I didn’t want to become someone who just ran between meetings without doing real work. But over time, I realized I also enjoyed problem-solving outside of engineering—dealing with people issues, priorities, and strategies.
My first management role was as Head of Accessibility, and I was already doing the work before the title was formalized. That formalization helped the company focus on internal transformations around accessibility. This shift allowed us to grow beyond just an engineering mindset.
Later, transitioning into product management was more of an organizational need, but it felt natural since my approach to accessibility had always been product-focused. I eventually went from acting CPO to the official role, and the biggest challenge throughout was learning to delegate. Letting go of tasks and accepting others' different approaches was something I had to adjust to. It also required setting aside time for handovers and coaching, which is a crucial part of the transition.
How has accessibility matured during your time at Highcharts and what did you have to put into place to get it to where it is today?
Before we formalized the Head of Accessibility role, accessibility was focused on a single product. My goal was to make it a company-wide priority, not just my responsibility. Now, it's embedded in our onboarding process—new employees receive accessibility training and resources. We also have a cross-departmental working group that looks at accessibility from all angles, beyond just product and innovation. It’s been a maturity shift from a product-specific focus to a full organizational commitment.
Now as chief product officer, how do you think about accessibility on your product road map? How do you prioritize accessibility versus other things?
From a CPO perspective, it's crucial that our product managers are trained in accessibility. They need to understand both our company strategy and the user needs involved. They're the ones who balance accessibility with other priorities on a day-to-day basis, consulting with experts, myself, the founder, and other teams.
We set broad guidelines through processes like OKRs, but PMs handle much of the prioritization. Strategically, we aim to go beyond compliance—we're not just following best practices; we're working to establish them. Since database accessibility is still developing, we're driving innovation to create better solutions while weighing impact versus effort.
How do you how do you prioritize accessibility across across your entire portfolio?
We prioritize accessibility through people and budgets. For example, we have a cross-departmental working group and dedicated subject matter experts focused on accessibility.
When it comes to individual product teams, prioritization is case-by-case, balancing effort versus impact. The impact isn’t always direct, sometimes affecting brand perception or referrals rather than revenue. We often categorize tasks as small, medium, or large to compare them against other priorities.
For innovation efforts, we map tasks on an impact vs. effort grid to guide decision-making. Compliance issues, however, are treated differently—they’re handled as essential, business-as-usual tasks.
How does the decsion making process work in your org?
We’re still refining the process, but the cross-functional, cross-departmental group helps with the initial decision-making. They hold workshops to prioritize accessibility-related efforts. When it comes to choosing between accessibility and other priorities, that's a management decision.
For product teams, it's a collaborative effort between me, our founder (who shares CPO responsibilities), and the product managers. We discuss where things should go, gather feedback from the teams, and if there's disagreement, we revisit and work through it together.
What opportunities do you see in the market related to accessibility?
A lot. The technology and user needs are already in place, and the market is wide open for those who use this technology to meet accessibility needs. The buying power exists, and legislation is pushing more businesses to prioritize accessibility, even if they don’t fully understand why yet.
AI, especially with large language models, offers huge opportunities. These advances allow us to process unstructured data, like natural language, much more efficiently, opening up new possibilities for accessibility solutions. It’s an exciting time, and the next three to five years will reveal even more opportunities in this space.
How do you think about AI and LLMs in the market right now?
Right now, everyone is trying to integrate AI into their products, sometimes without a clear purpose. But as it matures, we'll see it excel in the right use cases. One area where it’s already shining is in natural language interfaces, allowing users to interact with solutions more effectively. It’s also proving useful in summarization, personalization, and training.
For example, screen readers now have built-in support for alt text, even for images. It doesn’t need to be perfect to add value—it's better to hear a description like "a meme of a cat with a cigar" than just "image." Imperfection is still an improvement, and that's important to remember.
Do you have other examples of kind of AI or LLM technology being used in innovative ways for accessibility?
We've experimented with AI and LLMs at Highcharts, where we explored summarizing charts and enabling users to interact with their data. While it shows promise, we've encountered trust issues—users can't afford inaccuracies, especially with medical, financial, or important personal decisions like where to send their kids to school.
In some cases, it’s proven useful, and we've also found success by combining AI with more deterministic methods, allowing us to get the best of both worlds.
As a PM, what skill sets do you look for in new hires?
I prioritize traits over skills when hiring. Skills can be developed, but traits like intelligence and curiosity are essential. I look for someone who can absorb and structure information independently without needing constant direction.
Communication is the most important skill, as it's hard to teach and crucial for a role that interacts with sales, customers, marketing, engineering, and management. Good communication ensures the whole company flows smoothly, while poor communication causes constant friction.
It's also up to CPOs to identify skill gaps and address them through training, processes, or adding team members like business analysts or user researchers. In our case, since we work with technical products, our PMs must have programming experience to truly understand our users' needs.
If I was implementing Highcharts and want to take advantage of the work that you’ve done in accessibility, does it require me to do extra work, or is it just implemented via the normal API?
Our philosophy is to make sure Highcharts does as much automatically as possible. There is a module you have to import, and there's a warning if you don't import it, so it's more for the special cases where you don't want to load it.
And then there is an API for customizing it and going into detail. If you have accessibility expertise and you want to do better than what we can do automatically, then you can go in there and poke around and have fun. We try to do as much heavy lifting as we can for you and then get out of your way if you want to customize it.
Are there any employee-side initiatives that you're particularly proud of?
I think it’s an area where we are constantly improving. There is a cross departmental group that has a lot of say when it comes to accessibility projects, like employee onboarding, how accessibility factors into our culture, how we talk about it, how it affects hiring, and in general just being aware of our natural biases. I’m looking forward to seeing where we get with it, but the biggest thing for me was making sure we took it out of engineering and got the org as a whole talking about it.
Have you had any AHA moments as you’ve gone through this accessibility journey?
I remember one of our first user tests with a blind user using a screen reader. I thought providing as much information as possible would enhance the experience, but they found it overwhelming, saying, "Just give me the important stuff so I can move on." It made me realize that users, regardless of disabilities, value efficiency just like anyone else.
Hearing a screen reader at full speed was another eye-opener—it highlighted how productive users can be with it. Attending the CSUN assistive technology conference was also impactful. Talking to people who rely on accessibility every day shifted my motivation from engineering curiosity to understanding the real social impact our work can have.
Some people argue that accessibility slows down innovation. What would you say to those people?
It's an interesting question because while accessibility fuels innovation and improves usability for everyone (like the curb cut effect), there’s a valid point from a product management perspective. Sometimes, businesses need to quickly iterate and test assumptions with a subset of users, which may not include accessibility at the prototype stage. That’s part of risk management—validating ideas before investing heavily.
The key caveat is that companies must have the discipline to scrap inaccessible prototypes once validated, and rebuild with accessibility in mind. The danger lies in simply tweaking prototypes for launch, which can be costly later when retrofitting for accessibility. So, if a prototype isn't accessible, it's fine as long as you're prepared to rebuild it for everyone once the direction is confirmed.
What would you say to other orgs or PMs who want to make progress on accessibility but haven’t quite achieved the desired level of inclusiveness?
When people say accessibility stifles innovation, they're often implying they don't think it's worth the time. But if you're making a product for users, you shouldn't complain about making it accessible, just like you wouldn't complain about making it mobile responsive. The fastest thing to build is something that only works for yourself, but if you want others to pay for it, you need to put in the effort. It's really part of achieving product-market fit, not an optional task.
The key is figuring out when to address accessibility, and generally, it should be as early as possible, especially if your team lacks experience. You'll uncover a lot through this process, sometimes unexpectedly, which is why it's crucial to involve people with disabilities when you're testing usability. For purely technical aspects, you might skip that, but usability should always include accessibility considerations.
What are what are you most excited about about the future accessibility?
I'm optimistic about a few things. First, there's a noticeable culture shift among our customers, from startups to Fortune 500 companies like Elsevier. They’re moving away from focusing solely on compliance and are prioritizing usability, which is huge. It shows they understand the "why" behind accessibility, not just doing it because they have to.
I'm also excited about the technology available. We now have a wide range of tools to make products super accessible, whether it’s using haptics on mobile devices or leveraging modern browser APIs. It's a much better environment than the old days of dealing with outdated browsers.
Finally, AI is another game-changer. In the next five years, I expect the landscape to evolve significantly, and it's exciting to be part of that journey.