I got an mandate to implement accessibility in our company. We are currently 34 persons, 21 in developer role and 2 in UI and UX roles and 5 in project management roles. So I had read a lot on best practices around this and this post is a simple guideline of mine. I will write a sequel after we went through the process and hopefully report back my findings and lessons learned.
Starting with awareness and providing motivation
When developers don’t have any idea about why should they think about accessibility we are failing from start. I can understand that it has a lot to do with youth, experiences, own abilities and disabilities, family and friends and also culture and politics. So we are all different from the start on.
That’s why my first step is to map their thoughts and awareness but also try to find out about their inner motivation. This will make it possible to plan a better strategical approach for each and every one. And motivation is a key here. It does not help with awareness if nobody want’s to do it correctly.
Ethos, pathos, logos
We are different and we are triggered by different things, so it is smart to start with proven methodologies and ethos, pathos and logos do for sure cover majority of our efforts.
Ethos – we must make sure they trust in our professional knowledge and I must add here that we must all be aware of the legal and ethical benefits that accessibility have. So it is important that we, as accessibility advocates, follow our own ideas in practice and also show everybody their benefits for the society.
Pathos – it can be helpful to show benefits of accessibility for disabled users, maybe even make a workshop with disabled users and let them experience how they can be included when the products are accessible. Empathy labs, or maybe just some videos can do a lot of good here.
Logos – we must demonstrate the positive arguments, maybe even propose a business plan, demonstrate the problems that users can experience if products are not accessible and how and why we should improve accessibility so that everybody can benefit.
We should not try to manipulate or use threats, the meaning is to be sincere and display the user benefits so that everybody can identify and understand the benefits – so that we as a team will be motivated to learn and implement accessibility in our daily work.
The dirty legal details
Making accessible products is the law. So not making products accessible is breaking the law. It’s that simple. If people are not touched by empathy or normal reasoning, then we should make them think about this. I will not go into the even more dirty risk evaluation practices that some companies are doing – like “we will save a lot of money and fines are not so high” – please do not fall in that trap. Accessibility is good for users and also for search engines and other consumers that need good semantics. So do not disband it but embrace it. It is also not worth loosing users or even receiving negative publicity, right.
Be a partner for the customers, they want accessibility even if they do not know it yet
Every company needs their solutions to be accessible, but they are maybe not aware of it. Especially smaller companies can miss that information. Therefore it is our duty to inform them about it and to reassure them that we, as their provider, will take responsibility for it and make their online presence accessible. They could maybe feel that it is just another way of overcharging so we should make it clear that it is required by law and also best for their users at first. And at the same time they must know that costs are much lower if accessibility is there from the beginning and is not added on.
Accessibility lead responsibilities
At first – awareness and motivation are key. But then there are also other critical matters that need our attention, for example:
- accessibility lead must follow legislative and technical changes in the market. It is also geographically based responsibility and legal matters that are not clear should be consulted with law practitioners and not just minimized,
- accessibility lead must take charge and help with teaching at least the basics to the developers, designers, content creators and also project owners and testers. At the same time it is also advisable to promote International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) membership and certification, as they are an valuable network and also provide some proof of accessibility literacy,
- accessibility lead must help every team in the company and should also be involved when new projects start -as accessibility early on makes it easier and cheaper on the long run
- accessibility lead must take care that companies digital surfaces and beyond are accessible as well. Leading by example also on the company level
This should cover the initial needs and we can also set some key measurement milestones so that we could measure the effects regularly – for example when evaluating our customer sites for accessibility statement reviews and when reporting to the management about new people that were certified and so on.
Practical steps of an accessibility lead kick-off
- Talk with each developer, designer, content creator and project manager about their views, expectations, ambitions and level of awareness. Then make a simple matrix that can be used to measure improvements.
- Try to include people with disabilities into the company – ideally hire them, if they are willing to help us test and consult on accessibility. If it is not possible reach outside and seek cooperation with organizations offering accessibility experts. When we are just starting it is worth having a mentor that is in the business for 20 years or even more…
- Organize systematic workshops that go through WCAG. If everybody is by themselves it is not so efficient. It is better to share and evolve as a group.
- Try to have at least one accessibility person in each team. It is not possible to cover all teams all the time as a single person. We should work together, learn from each-other, prevent issues early, detect problems before they cause damage and be a team.
Set a common accessibility vision for the company
When teams have a clear goal or a vision about it it should be easier to cooperate and work towards it as a team.
Here are some examples of mine:
- Compliance is important but solutions can be compliant and not accessible – so user is more important. Accessibility is about users, not some rule-set that we must obey!
- Accessibility must be baked in – from the design sketches to DevOps routines and beyond. Don’t treat it as an “we’ll fix it at the end” checklist.
- We understand importance of accessibility and we help our customers to include most users possible. It is a matter of human rights, not some nice to have features.
Some additional thoughts
Every team should systematically use correct tools, when developing we could use lint tools, when testing we should also use screen-readers, when deploying some command line automatic tests and so on.
Recruiting should also mention accessibility requirements as a preference but at the same time we should have a really good on-boarding routine for new employees, especially those that are fresh from the university.
So here it is. I will present this to my company tomorrow and am looking forward to take the interview step as soon as possible. Thrilled to actually try to set this as an good practice and hope we will all benefit from it on the not so long run.
