Working inclusively with a visually impaired colleague on a product team

A colleague you will work with closely on your product team is blind. How would you collaborate with them day to day so they can contribute fully? ```hint Find the visual moments Walk through a normal week of PM work and notice where information passes through something people look at. Then ask who should tell you how each of those moments should change. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the colleague a peer PM, an engineer or designer I partner with, or someone who reports to me? - Is the team in the same office, remote or hybrid, and which tools does it rely on most: slide decks, design files, whiteboards or dashboards? - Has the colleague already told the team how they prefer to work, or am I starting with no information? - Should I cover only our working relationship, or also how I would shape the team's norms and tools? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Learning the colleague's working preferences from them, without assuming them or probing medical details - Concrete changes to the visual parts of PM work: documents, slides, mockups, dashboards and whiteboard sessions - Meeting habits that keep the colleague fully in the discussion, both in the room and on video calls - Turning accessibility into a team default and fixing inaccessible tools, without singling the colleague out or making them the team's accessibility tester - Privacy, equal expectations, and a feedback loop to check what is working ### Follow-up Questions - A design or whiteboard tool your team depends on does not work with your colleague's screen reader. What do you do? - How would you run a review of visual mockups so that your colleague can give real feedback on them? - After a few weeks, how would you find out whether your changes are actually helping?