You will already have processes and documents to guide the team's design and development work, and to monitor progress. An important step is to ensure that all your process documentation includes consideration of accessibility.
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Your definitions of users, such as the User Requirements Specification, and any test personas or focus groups should include older and disabled people.
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You will definitely need a practical set of accessibility guidelines or standards.
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Any gateway reviews or milestone points during the development process should include accessibility criteria that must be met.
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If you have regular project meetings with customers, accessibility should be a standing item on the agenda. The customer should also nominate someone who will lead on accessibility matters.
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If you have a testing team or test plans, they will need to include accessibility within the non-functional test criteria.
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User Acceptance Testing must include people with a wide range of abilities.
This will not be enough, though. You, your designers and developers and your testers must gain some understanding of the wide range of user abilities. Disability awareness training is one way of providing this understanding but there are others. Watching while older people or people with disabilities use a computer interface, with or without access technology, often brings home some of the barriers that users face.
You may wish to audit existing systems, to see where the major barriers currently are. RNIB can offer this service on a consultancy basis - contact the RNIB Business Development Team: telephone 01733 375345, email: busdev@rnib.org.uk.
We have found that once they grasp the principles and reasons for inclusive design, software designers and developers are enthusiastic, even obsessive, about accessibility. They will have plenty of questions, both general and specific, about different methods they use, about how to interpret guidelines, or how best to design the interface for a particular task. You need to be ready and able to answer these questions, drawing upon an accessibility expert if necessary. If the software development is for a particular contract, then the customer may also be able to contribute accessibility expertise.