Passion for accessibility is not enough! Organizations must build awareness, skills and integrate accessibility into their work

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Passion for accessibility and empathy helps a lot, but it do comes down to systematic integration if we want that our organization delivers accessible deliveries and products.

Last year I started a process to really implement accessibility and universal design into our small agency. We are still far from our inclusion goals, but let me reflect on my plans.

Passion for accessibility helps but is not enough. Accessibility must be integrated.

I am not the only one who is passionate about accessibility in our firm. That is for sure, but I noticed that accessibility was not integrated into our work processes in a systematic way that would make sure we deliver it with each commit and test it before each release.

I missed similar level of accessibility practices and similar definition of done including it.

It was a good time to be proactive – corona and working from home and everything – and it was also a perfect timing to start with some of our online webinars. Leaders got inspired and passionate about us sharing our knowledge, so I took the chance and got out of my comfort zone. Being a foreigner, with not so perfect language skills and also not so outgoing personality was not an optimal starting point. But I had to cease the moment to get at least some spotlight on the needs and importance of accessibility.

Plan was also to get certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals with Web Accessibility Specialist certification and then make a practical course for the general public. I did made a course but as I am pretty unknown on the outside only two of my clients wanted to join. So we made a special course only for them, with their site as a lab. It was a good kick-off for them and lead to whole new project.

Passion and empathy helps a lot, but it must lead to an systematic integration of accessibility into whole organization – otherwise you end up being frustrated and alone.

my thoughts on being passionate (that can be also applied to any other field).

My views on systematic approach towards integrating accessibility into a company

It all starts and ends with time and money. So presenting a realistic budget to the stakeholders is a must. It goes beyond compliance if we want to really make it happen.
Then there are co-workers – they need to understand, at least, the importance and benefits. Then we all have to learn, cooperate, investigate, improve. There is no point in talking about inclusion and accessibility without involving people of many abilities and disabilities. So cooperation with different associations should be a must. And there is always a problem that is better solved by somebody that was already “there” and solved it. So it is smart to have a senior mentor from outside before we are confident enough in our internal efforts. And at the end – they say that we are what we measure. So to have actionable goals that are being followed upon is in my opinion as important as everything else.

To give some semantics to these paragraphs, my action plan or a checklist if you want:

  1. Time and expenses budget (courses, tools, meetings, workshops),
  2. Budget needs approval – stakeholders need arguments,
  3. Organization needs to be informed about different aspects on accessibility that they need to know about and also important work for them,
  4. Interviews with key personnel – developers, designers and project managers – to be able to feel their pain, set expectations, measure situation and get their suggestions,
  5. Reach out of the organization and get networks with disabled communities and also accessibility veterans, make cooperation contracts,
  6. Define knowledge, tools, KPIs and procedures, common strategies and goals, show the path,
  7. Measure, improve, test, and learn – continuously.

For now this seems like a good plan and I am happy to report that I made a huge progress that is also beneficial to our customers. But we are still in the beginning and I am looking forward to near future when we really integrate accessibility into our daily tasks and minds.

Author: Bogdan Cerovac

I am IAAP certified Web Accessibility Specialist (from 2020) and was Google certified Mobile Web Specialist.

Work as digital agency co-owner web developer and accessibility lead.

Sole entrepreneur behind IDEA-lab Cerovac (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility lab) after work. Check out my Accessibility Services if you want me to help your with digital accessibility.

Also head of the expert council at Institute for Digital Accessibility A11Y.si (in Slovenian).

Living and working in Norway (🇳🇴), originally from Slovenia (🇸🇮), loves exploring the globe (🌐).

Nurturing the web from 1999, this blog from 2019.

More about me and how to contact me: