9 minutes
Keeping the roadmap alive Set a review cadence, report progress honestly, close the loop with the people who found the barriers, and adjust when the plan meets reality.
What you’ll be able to do Design a review cadence and progress report for a roadmap that keeps decision-makers engaged, reports honestly on stalled items, and shares results with disabled staff and participants. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What restores momentum? Document a next step for Keeping the roadmap alive: Schedule the first roadmap review with the decision-makers named on your top five lines, and send them the status format from this lesson a week ahead. Plans fade; reviews do not have to Most accessibility roadmaps do not fail dramatically. They fade. The quick fixes get done, momentum drops, the planned projects wait for decisions that never get scheduled, and the status email becomes a message nobody opens. Sustaining a roadmap is a design problem with a known answer: a review cadence that puts decision-makers in front of the decisions, a status format that tells the truth, and a share-back step that keeps faith with the people who found the barriers.
The review should be short, scheduled and attended by the people named as decision-makers on the open lines. Its agenda is the roadmap itself: what moved, what stalled and why, what decision is needed and by whom, and what the measures show. Stalled items are presented as decisions needed, with a date, not as apologies.
Honesty in status reporting is what makes the review worth attending. A progress summary of green items that everyone knows are not green teaches leaders to ignore it. An honest report that says three items are waiting on a budget decision, names the decision-maker and proposes a date is a report that produces action.
A status line that tells the truth Moved: what was completed, and the measure it changed.
Stalled: what has not moved, the specific reason, and whether it is a knowledge gap, a constraint or a values disagreement.
Decision needed: what, from whom, by when. This is the line the review exists for.
Measures: the two or three access and outcome measures the roadmap committed to, with the current value and the trend.
Shared back: when and how the people who found the barriers were told.
Put the decision in the room What you can change You control whether stalled items are reported to people who can decide them or to people who can only sympathize.
What to watch for Do not send status to a distribution list and call it governance. Do not mark an item in progress for more than one review without naming the decision that would move it.
Your next step For every stalled line, write the decision needed and the name of the person who holds it, and put both on the next review agenda.
The audit participants gave you their time and their experience of being excluded. Telling them what changed is not a communications task. It is the return on their trust, and it is what makes the next audit possible.
Sustaining habits Quarterly, with decision-makers
Short, scheduled, attended by those who can say yes. The agenda is the roadmap. Canceled reviews are the first sign of a fading plan.
Stalled is a status, not a failure
Reported honestly with the reason and the decision needed, a stalled item becomes an agenda item. Hidden behind “in progress,” it becomes a permanent one.
Share back first
Disabled staff and participants who took part in the audit hear what changed before leadership does, in plain language, with thanks in the form they choose.
Adjust without abandoning
When a project proves larger, an owner leaves or a constraint appears, rewrite the line rather than dropping it. The barrier is still there; the plan should still say so.
Carry this forward A roadmap reviewed on a schedule with its decision-makers present survives; one reviewed only by its owner fades within two quarters.
Report stalled items as stalled, with the reason and the decision needed; a green progress summary nobody believes is worse than an honest amber one.
The people who found the barriers should hear what was fixed before the leadership deck does, and should be thanked in ways they choose.
A one-page review format with cadence, attendees, the four status lines and the share-back step.
Schedule the first roadmap review with the decision-makers named on your top five lines, and send them the status format from this lesson a week ahead.
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Reset this lesson
Previous lesson Back to course Carry this into practice Turn a list of accessibility findings into a roadmap with owners, decision rights and measures, and carry it through the resistance it will meet.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
