When discussing accessibility with some business owners and especially legal departments we can get a feeling of some kind of understanding gap. As accessibility can quickly be presented as a burden, a law to obey, or maybe even as a thing to prevent lawsuits.
So as an accessibility specialist – our job is to enlighten them about overlapping of accessibility and usability, about making things accessible for everyone can and should really benefit everyone and not just check one needed compliance from our task list.
It should be understood and supported that universal design and accessibility are there for the benefit of both business owners and users. Some may argue that their user base is definitely not affected, but it is never so simple. We must not forget about different obstacles in our lives, some that can also be temporary and some that are not.
But can we actually talk about compliance
Yes, we can also define goals and then evaluate if our website or application is compliant. But this is a bit risky – as compliant website is not necessarily accessible and usable. It is also very important to decide what will we comply to. Will it be the WCAG 2.1? Will it be on level A and AA or maybe on AAA as well?
At the same time – if we say that our site is compliant – are we sure that some part of it that was maybe added just after we defined the site is now compliant really is compliant as well? Are we aware that compliance can only be defined for a defined point in time and every minor change can cause non-compliance?
So – yes – we can talk about compliance but we must be aware of it’s scope and time perspectives. At the same time we must also be sincere reporting it. We can not just write that we are compliant, we must define exactly how and where and when we are compliant.
At the same time we must also consider the differences which can occur when evaluating complex sites with complex web applications. Can we really guarantee that whole site is compliant if we did not test and evaluate whole site and each and every function on it.
To conclude – it is not so strange for the European Web Accessibility Directive to integrate accessibility statement and communicate some of the main aspects to the users. But at the same time with being honest about potential non-compliance – can we then be compliant at the same time? I will for sure use more time to investigate about this peculiar situation.