Yes in the hanggliding world checklists are pretty
much non existent, you would get laughed at for having one, but what they do use is something called a "hang check"

What this is is before you launch off of a cliff or slope,
you have an assistant hold your nose wires and you drop
down into the prone position, when you do this you can crank your
head around and visibly see that you have connected your carbineer
correctly to your hang strap and backup hang strap. Usually your
assistant also verifies this but I always preferred seeing the
connection with my own eyes.

This was always common at any site I ever flew at.

I also owned a tandem hangglider and did 60-70 tandem flights
total, I would never consider launching tandem without doing
a proper hangcheck, and I have never been at a site where anyone
ever launched tandem without doing this, you could expect a bunch
of people to start screaming if they ever saw this.

I am not confident a checklist would have saved this tragedy, but I
am confident that a hangcheck would have avoided it.

By the way hanggliders are far more complicated to assemble
than a sailplane is.