I managed to convince our stakeholders that we need to systematize our accessibility knowledge and awareness on practically all segments of our organization. And they agreed.
I was thrilled about this – stakeholder involvement is prerequisite. How else can an organization really start to integrate accessibility into it’s processes and products?
Here are some thoughts about how I am planning to approach the practical execution. I had to plan out this because organizations need to have a business plan. Time is money, so organization must have at least some estimates about it.
Initial evaluation of accessibility maturity
You are what you measure can be a bit harsh but it does include a universal truth. How can you detect progress? There are multiple ways, as always, but I like to measure something, so that I can compare it later. It does not need to be scientific, I like to be practical at things.
So first natural step for me was to make short interviews with people that should embrace accessibility in their daily work routines – designers, content providers and developers (mainly full-stack and front-end – I do not think back-end developers share same amount of it and to save some time I intentionally did not involve them in this phase).
Interviews were very short and I tried to collect information about the following:
- personal preferences and thoughts on accessibility – to evaluate the motivation of individuals,
- experiences and pain-points, what seems to be hard, what would they change,
- practical question about what does WCAG SC 1.1.1 mean to them. This is a tricky question as it really detects if they have at least some overview on the WCAG,
- the state of their responsibility – how do they evaluate their own accessibility responsibility,
- their ambitions for the future – do they maybe want to upgrade their knowledge to a certification or similar,
- I also tried to collect other thoughts, wishes and worries, so that we can monitor them next time.
I was not able to find similar approaches online, but I guess that some human resource specialist have abundance of experience with similar evaluations and that I may need to improve them in the future. Time will show, but I think I did extract the essence for the future comparison.
Accessibility competence budget
As mentioned in the introduction – stakeholders need some estimates, so that they can plan other activities and have control over money flow and so on. Especially in consultant companies where time really is money – taking some consultants out of their invoicing activities means direct burden for a company. So time must be used well and it must be estimated as correctly as possible.
I tried to really come with as effective as possible suggestion and here are some key parts:
- Common grounds – a common (re)introduction to accessibility, legal and technical aspects, how to test for it and how to treat it as an integral part of products – about a day,
- Advanced course by accessibility veterans, customized for project managers, designers and developers – about a day,
- Inclusion of people with disabilities – as first as demonstration providers and later also as long-term co-operations – about a day,
- Common workshop and discussion about how to scale accessibility throughout the organization and how to integrate it into deliveries and other processes – about a day,
- Presentation about accessibility strategy for the whole company – so that everybody is informed about agreed changes and common views on the implementation – one hour,
- Regular meetings that involve at least one member from each team, so that all teams try to keep same accessibility focus and competence – some hours per week,
- A budget for external expert support – when our internal competence riches it’s limits it is smart to have an expert at hand – I estimated around an hour per week in the beginning, that can also be extended if needed.
I really think that this plan can lift the organization that has to start to treat accessibility as an integral part of their deliveries and not an after-thought part of quality assurance. As I really believe that thinking about accessibility from the start phase and on is the only scalable way and can really mean the difference between delivering accessible products or not.
Re-evaluations – following up on progress
This is as important as everything else. As common in other disciplines – we have to measure and adjust. I am thinking about the following:
- re-evaluate the people that I interviewed and get their feedback,
- improving the continuous knowledge transfer and best practices,
- revisioning the on-boarding process – as new employees must catch up,
- least but not last – evaluating accessibility of our deliveries and products.
If people have good motivation they will probably also initiate other important subjects like for example investment in more knowledge transfers, libraries of internal best practices and for example design systems that can provide accessible common grounds, new technology and new methodologies.
This is only the start
Time will show and I need to investigate about how other organizations cope with this, but I am already experiencing some positive effects of my plans.
And involving end-users is always smart, so I will also reflect and act more on that.
