Organizational Governance and Management

Question 1

Organizational Governance and Management

Answer 1

To support continuous efforts to address accessibility issues, organizations should develop a way to manage, govern, and enforce accessibility standards and best practices. Usual responses to accessibility issues have been to remediate issues once they have been discovered and retrofit accessibility into existing products and services. Establishing accessibility governance and management will help organizations avoid the expensive and legal consequences of addressing accessibility on an as-needed basis; and it will help promote accessibility awareness within the organization.

Question 2

European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education Guidelines

Answer 2

• Include an accessibility statement in the organizaon’s long-term strategy
• Develop a strategy or plan for implementing accessible information
• Make someone responsible for implementing the information accessibility plan and provide them with the required resources
• Plan an incremental implementation – be ambious and modest at the same time
• Embed accessibility into your information production and dissemination processes
• Provide information, education and training on accessibility for all staff
• When outsourcing information production, make sure accessibility requirements are addressed and undergo a quality check

Question 3

European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education Guidelines - Policy

Answer 3

• Develop a long-term strategy that recognizes all aspects of disability.
• Publish an accessibility statement that includes a commitment to make your services and information accessible.
• Develop a procurement policy that covers accessibility compliance for products and services, including those for information production and dissemination.

Question 4

European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education Guidelines - Plan

Answer 4

• Develop an information accessibility plan that is detailed and ambitious, but realistic and covers small steps.
• Ensure the person or team responsible for the plan has authority and resources

Question 5

European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education Guidelines - Practice

Answer 5

• Conduct a pilot of the Guidelines.
• Provide awareness training for all staff and how accessibility applies to information.
• Provide training for content specialists on tools to make information accessible.
• Produce style guides and templates.
• Update work processes to embed information accessibility.
• Create information using the style guides and templates.
• Give external providers the Guidelines and requirements for compliance.
• Conduct accessibility testing before releasing any services or publishing any information.

Question 6

W3C WAI Recommendations

Answer 6

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has published a guide on Planning and Managing Web Accessibility. The steps outlined apply to individual projects and on a larger organizational level. The 4 major phases are Initiate, Plan, Implement, Sustain.

Question 7

W3C WAI Recommendations - Initiate

Answer 7

Develop understanding of accessibility and build organizational enthusiasm.

• Learn the basics
• Explore the current environment
• Set objectives
• Develop business case
• Raise awareness
• Gather support

Question 8

W3C WAI Recommendations - Plan

Answer 8

Develop clear goals and an environment that supports accessibility.

• Create accessibility policy
• Assign responsibilities
• Determine budget and resources
• Review environment
• Review websites
• Establish monitoring framework
• Engage with stakeholders

Question 9

W3C WAI Recommendations - Implement

Answer 9

Ensure personnel are trained, tools are available, and accessibility is included throughout.

• Build skills and expertise
• Integrate goals into policies
• Assign tasks and support delivery
• Evaluate early and regularly
• Prioritize issues
• Track and communicate progress

Question 10

W3C WAI Recommendations - Sustain

Answer 10

Continue to review and report on content, processes, and resources.

• Monitor websites
• Engage with stakeholders
• Track standards and legislation
• Adapt to new technologies
• Incorporate user feedback

Question 11

Capability Maturity Model

Answer 11

The Capability Maturity Model (CCM) for Software was developed in 2006 by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Its intended realm is for software development, but it can also be applied to describe the accessibility efforts of an organization.

Question 12

CCM Maturity Levels - Initial

Answer 12

Capability is ad hoc and unstable. The organization doesn’t have an established process for ensuring that products, services, and information are accessible.

Question 13

CCM Maturity Levels - Policies in Place

Answer 13

The organization has established policies for managing projects and procedures for accessibility. The processes are: practiced, documented, enforced, trained, measured, and able to be improved.

Question 14

CCM Maturity Levels - Defined

Answer 14

Standard processes to develop and maintain accessibility on an organizational level are documented and they are part of a unified, coherent approach. Processes are modified as needed to increase efficiency.

Question 15

CCM Maturity Levels - Managed

Answer 15

Well-defined, measurable goals are established for products and processes.

Question 16

CCM Maturity Levels - Optimizing

Answer 16

Continuous, proactive process improvement is prevalent in the entire organization. Weaknesses are identified and corrected, while effective solutions are replicated and transferred throughout the organization.

The key practices that allow an organization to progress through the various maturity levels include the following features:

• Commitment to perform: Establishment of organizational policies and senior management sponsorship.
• Ability to perform: Resources, organizational structures, and training.
• Activities performed: Establishment of plans and procedures, performing and tracking work, taking corrective action as needed.
• Measurement and analysis: Examples of measurements for determining the status and effectiveness of the activities performed.
• Verifying implementation: Reviews and audits by management and quality assurance.

Question 17

Business Disability Forum Accessibility Maturity Model

Answer 17

The Business Disability Forum developed the Accessibility Maturity Model to aid organizations in conducting a self-assessment to track and plan their accessibility progress. This model is based on the Accessible Technology Charter, which spells out 10 commitments to good practice on accessible information and communications technology (ICT).

Question 18

10 commitments to good practice on accessible information and communications technology (ICT)

Answer 18

• We will appoint an Executive Level Technology Champion who will report to the board, raise awareness of the benefits of this agenda and ensure that we achieve continuous improvement in this area.
• We will ensure that colleagues are aware of how technology can liberate the contribution of everyone, as colleagues and customers.
• We will routinely consult with disabled colleagues, customers and experts to ensure that we understand the impact of our technology on talent management, colleague productivity and our diverse customer base.
• We will enable built in accessibility to allow reasonable personalization of technology by our colleagues and customers.
• We will embed and promote a workplace adjustment process, that provides usable technology solutions for disabled colleagues, within a reasonable timeframe.
• We will give our relevant teams the accessibility know-how needed to deliver effective business processes and adjustments for disabled colleagues and customers.
• We will establish our performance baseline using the Accessibility Maturity Model. We will consistently go beyond minimum compliance to bring greater benefits to our business and share best practices with others.
• We will promote a development lifecycle for our technology solutions that is based on inclusive design from definition to delivery, to minimize the cost and reputational risk triggered by retrofitting products and systems.
• We will include accessibility as a key requirement within our procurement process and build relationships with supply partners to develop and deliver accessible products and services.
• We will continuously improve accessibility within our organization, document what works and share our learning with the Technology Taskforce.

Question 19

Integration Management - Accessibility is a Process Management Challenge, Not Just a Technical Challenge

Answer 19

It can be tempting to think of accessibility just as a technical challenge—because certainly there are technical aspects to accessibility—but it is more than a technical challenge. It is also a process management challenge. Organizations need to permanently embed accessibility into the process of design, development, and testing.

Accessibility is a process/program, not a project.

Question 20

Integration Management - It Takes a Team

Answer 20

Integrating accessibility into the organization’s culture begins with creating a team specifically assigned to implement the change within the organization. The team’s responsibilities will include identifying the goals and objectives of implementing accessibility; selecting internal standards, best practices, resources and tools needed to incorporate accessibility; and specifying accessibility guidelines and policies for the entire organization.

The team should have a managerial leader who ensures that the team is upholding its responsibilities for addressing accessibility within the organization. Other members of the team should represent various departments and have an expressed interest in remediating accessibility issues.

Question 21

Integration Management - It Requires Expertise

Answer 21

You’re fooling yourself if you think an organization can “get by” with a little bit of accessibility knowledge but no actual expertise. Somebody has to know accessibility very well, particularly in very technical domains of accessibility, such as web accessibility. Here are some ideas for maintaining accessibility expertise in an organization:

• Hire experts (and make sure they really are experts), OR
• Outsource the accessibility expertise, at least at first (eventually you’ll want some in-house expertise)
• Train your team (with a combination of live training and online resources like Deque University.)
• Make accessibility part of the on-boarding process for new hires
• Hire people with disabilities to be part of your team

Question 22

Integration Management - It Requires Commitment at the Executive Level

Answer 22

It is critical that the team has support and commitment from the executive level. An executive leader in accessibility not only empowers the team to make accessibility decisions and enforce policies, but an executive leader can make a public statement about the organization’s commitment to accessibility.

Question 23

Web Development Process

Answer 23

Even though this page talks specifically about the web development process, the same ideas can be adapted to the development process for consumer or industrial products, architecture, transportation systems, etc.

Question 24

Web Development Process - Plan, Create, Test

Answer 24

One way to summarize the overall web development process could be as follows: Plan, Create, Test. Usually this is cyclical. In an agile workflow, the cycle may happen every two weeks, at least for the smaller tasks. The larger tasks would have longer cycles.

Question 25

Web Development Process - Step 1: Planning and Design Phase

Answer 25

Whether the ambitions are large (a complete site redesign) or small (a new feature), accessibility needs to be part of the plan.

• Research (market, users, opportunities, etc.)
• Set Requirements (marketing/sales goals, branding, purpose, accessibility standards and best practices, security, legal, etc.)
• Design the Information Architecture and User Experience

Desktop interaction experience-

• Sighted keyboard users (ensure visual focus indicator, full keyboard functionality, keyboard focus management on dynamic widgets, etc.)
• Blind users (correct semantic markup, alt text for images, landmarks, headings, ARIA markup on custom widgets, etc.)

Mobile interaction experience-

• Blind users (compatible with mobile screen readers)
• Low vision users (ability to zoom)

Visual experience-

• Low vision (ability to zoom, ability to customize colors of text/background, high contrast, etc.)
• Colorblindness (don’t use color alone to convey information)

Auditory experience-

• Deaf users (video captions)
• Deafblind (transcripts)

Roles (possibly) Involved-

• Executive team
• Product owners
• Business analysts
• Accessibility lead/team
• Security lead
• Legal team
• QA lead
• Information architects
• UX team
• UI team
• Visual designers

Question 26

Web Development Process - Step 2: Creating the Content and Components

Answer 26

This is where the main work of building and writing gets done. The people creating the content and components need to have clear instructions from the previous planning stage in order to ensure what they create is accessible.

Front End Markup and Programming-

• Preliminary testing, unit tests:
• Test with automated tools (like axe DevTools)
• Manual testing
• Screen reader testing (especially of dynamic/interactive components)

Create Text Content-

• Add basic accessibility features, such as:
• Add alt text to embedded images
• Ensure proper table markup
• Ensure logical reading order
• Ensure proper heading hierarchy for sections of content
• Ensure understandability

Test the Multimedia-

• Deaf (captions)
• Blind (audio descriptions)
• Deafblind (transcripts)

Roles (possibly) Involved-

• Programmers
• Visual designers
• CSS coders
• Accessibility lead/team
• QA team
• Technical writers
• Marketing team
• Content specialists
• Data entry team
• PDF accessibility specialist
• MS Office accessibility specialist
• Producer
• Videographer
• Sound technician
• Video editor
• Transcriber
• Captioning specialist
• Audio description specialist

Question 27

Web Development Process - Step 3: Testing the Content and Components

Answer 27

This is where the QA team, together with the accessibility team, determine whether the accessibility requirements were met.

Test the Front End Markup and Programming-

• Pre-launch testing, against the full list of accessibility requirements.
• Test with automated tools (like axe DevTools)
• Manual testing
• Screen reader testing
• Full accessibility test
• Log/track defects with detailed accessibility user stories, instructions to reproduce bug, acceptance criteria, etc.

Test the Text Content-

• Test for text accessibility features, such as:
• Add alt text to embedded images
• Ensure proper table markup
• Ensure logical reading order
• Ensure proper heading hierarchy for sections of content
• Ensure understandability

Test the Multimedia

• Test multimedia against full list of multimedia accessibility requirements.
• Deaf (captions)
• Blind (audio descriptions)
• Deafblind (transcripts)

Roles (possibly) Involved-

• QA team (trained in basic accessibility testing techniques)
• Accessibility team (with full accessibility expertise)
• Users with disabilities (reality check with real users)

Question 28

Take Accessibility Seriously

Answer 28

If accessibility is taken seriously at all three of these main stages—planning, creating, and testing—the web site has a much greater chance of meeting the needs of people with disabilities. If accessibility is not taken seriously, it’s almost guaranteed that the web site will present accessibility barriers to people with disabilities.

Question 29

What Does “Done” Mean?

Answer 29

What do you want to accomplish? Define clear goals with a clear end point so you’ll know when you’re done. Even though it’s true that accessibility is an ongoing need, you still need to set clear expectations and milestones, or you may end up wasting too much time on issues that don’t matter very much, and this can cause you to lose motivation.

Question 30

Categorizing Your Accessibility Efforts

scope

Answer 30

Usually your scope can be defined within one of the following general categories:

• Innovation: Inventing new accessibility technologies or techniques
• New Design: Incorporating known accessibility best practices into a new product or project
• Retrofitting: Fixing the accessibility flaws in an existing product or project
• Maintenance: Ensuring that new product features don’t break existing accessibility features

Question 31

Defining the Scope for Innovation Efforts

Answer 31

Most of the time you don’t need to invent or innovate new accessibility solutions. The solutions are already out there. It’s just a matter of identifying the right solutions, then implementing them.

Every once in a while, though, you may come up against a new problem that requires a new solution. That’s an exciting thing to do! Still, setting the scope for inventing a new accessibility solution can be difficult to do. The most important thing is to write a clear problem statement. You might choose to do this as a “user story” along these lines:

• AS a person with limited grip strength
• I WANT to be able to pour milk into a bowl
• SO THAT I can eat a bowl of cereal with milk in the morning without help from other people.

With a clear problem statement or user story, you can then begin to work on solutions that directly address the problem or need.

Question 32

Defining Scope for New Designs

Answer 32

A new design might be:

• A new product (e.g. web site, consumer item, etc.) that has never existed before
• A new component of the product
• A new method within a component
• A new interface for an existing component
• New content that has never existed before
• Or some variation on these ideas

When you’re designing something new, you have the advantage that you can build the accessibility into the design from the beginning. This is MUCH better and easier than trying to add accessibility onto an existing design after the fact.

Make sure you involve an accessibility expert in the early design phase, in writing design requirements, writing test requirements, and in the quality assurance process.

Question 33

Defining Scope when Retrofitting Old Designs

Answer 33

You don’t always have the luxury of working on new designs. Sometimes you have to fix old designs and add accessibility features onto them. That’s always harder, and therefore more expensive, but realistically, sometimes that’s what you have to do. One question to ask yourself is:

Would it be better to fix the old design, or would it be better to start fresh and create a new design the right way, with embedded accessibility?

Your answer will depend on how recently the design was created, how bad the accessibility problems are in the existing design, and your other priorities at the time. If you just finished the existing design, you’ll probably be reluctant to start over from the beginning, so you’ll probably want to retrofit the existing design. If the accessibility is extremely bad, it may be faster and easier to start over. That’s a hard decision to make, but sometimes it’s the best one. And if you have other priorities that coincide with creating a new design, then it makes sense to go ahead and do that. If not, you’ll probably end up retrofitting.

Question 34

When retrofitting, some basic tasks to consider for the scope are:

Answer 34

• Create an inventory of everything that needs to be assessed for accessibility
• Assess the items in the inventory, or assess a representative sample of the inventory, if the inventory is large
• Prioritize the accessibility fixes that need to be done
• Once you know the size of the inventory and the depth of the accessibility problems, you will have a pretty good idea of the scope of the retrofitting project.

Question 35

Defining Scope During Maintenance

Answer 35

If you have a relatively stable design, with incremental changes introduced from time to time, you’ll want to monitor the end product to ensure all of your hard work on accessibility doesn’t go to waste when new components are added that are not accessible. If you’re working on a web site, you may want to set up automated software, such as axe Monitor opens in a new window to scan through the site on a regular basis and produce reports. The software can identify new problems as they’re introduced.

If new problems are introduced regularly, this points to a larger problem in your process. Revisit your overall accessibility strategy and ensure your team is always developing with accessibility in mind, rather than waiting until the maintenance step to find out if there are accessibility problems.

Question 36

How Much “Extra” Time Does Accessibility Add?

Answer 36

One thing that a lot of managers want to know right away is how much extra time it’s going to take to incorporate accessibility into the design process. This is kind of a trick question, because if you’re always designing with accessibility in mind, then accessibility is never “extra.” It’s normal. It’s the way things are done.

But for organizations that are just starting to take accessibility seriously, we have to be honest and say that it does take some time, and therefore money, to do accessibility right. So how much extra time does it take? The correct answer is “it depends,” but let’s take a closer look at what it depends on.

We’ll use the example of web accessibility to discuss some of the considerations.

Best-Case Scenario
In a best-case scenario, with all the best processes in place, an expert team, and uncomplicated content, accessibility tasks might add only 1% to 5% to the overall development time.

Worst-Case Scenario
With an inexperienced team, an immature process, and highly complicated content, the estimate can balloon to much more than that, especially if the task is to fix existing content that is so badly inaccessible that it needs to be re-factored at a fundamental level. The accessibility tasks might double or triple the original development time in those scenarios. Much of that time would be spent learning what accessible design means, training the team, setting up a good process, and fixing a lot of trial-and-error mistakes along the way.

Question 37

Do You Have an Accessibility Lead or Coordinator?

Answer 37

Having a qualified person designated as the Accessibility Lead or Coordinator can help tremendously, because this person can manage the overall process, assign responsibilities, get involved at every stage of the process—from helping to write design requirements to providing technical expertise to ensuring a successful QA evaluation at the end.

Ideally this would be a full-time position, or possibly more than one full-time position. One person could specialize in the process side of accessibility, and another person could specialize in the technical side of accessibility. They would both be authorities within the organization.

Question 38

How Much Accessibility Experience Does Your Team Have?

Answer 38

If your team is experienced in accessible design, they will be more efficient. The experience needs to be at multiple levels of the organization, including:

• The executive team, planners, business analysts, product owners, project managers, and program managers
• UX designers, information architects, UI designers, and graphic designers
• Developers
• QA Testers
• Content writers
• Multimedia creators

Question 39

How Mature is Your Accessibility Process?

Answer 39

Even if you have an experienced team, if you have an immature or incomplete process, you won’t be as efficient as you could be. The more completely accessibility is embedded into the process, from the very first steps, the more successful your accessibility efforts will be

Question 40

Do You Already Have a Library of Accessible Widgets, Patterns, or Methods?

Answer 40

One of the most effective ways to save time is to have your team of accessibility experts create (and test) an official library of accessible (and reusable) widgets, patterns, and methods for the rest of the development team to use. If the rest of the team uses items from the library, they won’t have to put any effort into making them accessible. They’ll already be accessible.

Question 41

The Flexibility of Your Development Environment

Answer 41

If your development environment is very flexible, it may be relatively easy to add accessibility features to existing code. If you are using pre-packaged widgets (perhaps by a third-party vendor) that are difficult to edit, or if your development team doesn’t have the expertise to edit the pre-packaged widgets, it will be harder and slower to create accessible versions of those scripts.

Question 42

Are You Starting a New Design or Retrofitting an Old Design?

Answer 42

When you are starting a new design, you have the ability to think about accessibility at every step along the way, saving you a lot of time in the long run.

If you’re retrofitting an old design, everything you do is, by definition, extra time devoted to accessibility. You might get lucky. Sometimes the original designs can be modified relatively easily. Other times the designs are so tailored to people without disabilities that the whole concept has to be re-engineered to make it accessible.

Question 43

How Much Interactivity is There?

Answer 43

If there is a lot of interaction in a design, it will take longer to make that design accessible than a static design because there are so many more accessibility requirements to consider with highly interactive content.

Question 44

How Much Math or Technical Data is There?

Answer 44

Math accessibility requires specialized knowledge, and it can be time-consuming to produce accessible digital math content.

Question 44

How Much Multimedia is There?

Answer 44

Adding accessibility features—like captions and transcripts—to multimedia can be time consuming. It can be even more time-consuming to add audio descriptions to videos, especially if the video does not have adequate pauses built into the soundtrack.

Question 45

Will You be Using Any Automated Tools?

Answer 45

Automated tools like the aXe browser extension and axe Monitor can save quite a bit of time during the development and testing stages. No automated tool can test everything—you still have to do some manual testing and testing with screen readers—but if you don’t use any automated tools, you’ll slow down the process.

Question 46

How Many Technology Configurations Will You Test?

Answer 46

If your goal is to test on every possible technology configuration with every possible assistive technology brand and version, and every possible user setting, you’re going to be testing for a very long time. Even though it’s true that the purpose of accessibility is to make things as accessible to as many people as possible, you can catch most of the problems by testing with a subset of technology configurations. One possible list of testing environments could be:

• Firefox (current version) with NVDA
• Internet Explorer (one version back) with JAWS
• Safari on iOS (current version) with VoiceOver

This combination won’t catch every possible problem, but it will get you very close.

Question 47

The Real Goal Is to Make Accessibility “Business as Usual”

Answer 47

You want accessibility to be “business as usual.” You don’t want accessibility to be something that you do sometimes for some projects. That’s a recipe for failure, and it means that every time you need to start a new accessibility project, you have to rebuild your process and your expertise, especially if some of your in-house accessibility experts have left the organization since the last accessibility project.

Once you achieve accessibility as a “business as usual” expectation, then it doesn’t even make sense to ask the question of how much more accessibility costs, because the answer will be that it costs nothing extra. Accessibility is never optional. It’s just the way we do things.

Question 48

Cost Management

Answer 48

Cost management is closely related to time management, which was the focus of the previous section. In fact, nearly all of the cost of accessibility will be in the time it takes to get things done. There are a couple of possible exceptions.

Question 49

Third Party Accessibility Consultants

Answer 49

Sometimes it makes sense to hire third-party accessibility consultants, like Deque, to help with a project, especially on a short-term basis. The costs can vary widely, depending on the type of services you need. Services in a web development context might include:

• Evaluating existing web content
• Filing accessibility bugs in your bug tracking system
• Training your team
• Working side-by-side with your developers
• Consulting with management on accessibility process strategies
• Creating accessible content
• Fixing inaccessible content

Question 50

Software

costs

Answer 50

Accessibility software can be another expense. Free browser extensions like axe DevTools don’t add any cost, but enterprise-level applications like axe Monitor (which can scan entire web sites and produce comprehensive reports) are more expensive.

You may also need to invest in licenses of assistive technologies like JAWS or ZoomText.

Question 51

Writing QA Tests During the Planning Phase

Answer 51

One of the jobs of the QA team is to write tests based on the requirements written in the early planning phase. The clearer the accessibility requirements, the clearer the tests will be, the greater the chance that the testing team will catch all of the important accessibility bugs.

Question 52

User Stories

Answer 52

User stories can be written into the design requirements. As an organization gets more mature in its accessibility efforts, many of these user stories can be recycled from one project to the next, because the accessibility needs remain constant, even though the implementation details vary from one design to the next.

You should write user stories for various kinds of disabilities.

Question 53

User Story Example: Blind User; Labels on Form Input Fields

Answer 53

• AS a blind screen reader user using the tab key to navigate the form fields,
• I WANT my screen reader to read the label of a form input
• SO THAT I know what the form input is for.

Question 54

User Story Example: Low Vision User; Good Contrast on Text

Answer 54

• AS a low vision user who has difficulty seeing low contrast text,
• I WANT to be able to clearly distinguish the text from the background (with a contrast ratio that passes WCAG AA guidelines)
• SO THAT I can read the text.

Question 55

Acceptance Criteria

Answer 55

Developers need to have clear guidance to know when they have succeeded in meeting the design goal.

Question 56

Acceptance Criteria Example: Blind User; Labels on Form Input Fields

Answer 56

The form input has programmatically determinable text using one of the following methods:

• Explicit label (<label>Name:</label> <input></input>)
• Implicit label (<label>Name: <input></input></label>)
• aria-label or aria-labelled by (only under conditions where explicit or implicit labels won’t work

Question 57

Acceptance Criteria Example: Low Vision user; Good Contrast on Text

Answer 57

The text passes the WCAG AA guidelines for color contrast as determined by running the axe DevTools browser extension on the content.

Question 58

High Quality Bug Reports

Answer 58

The QA team needs to learn how to write very specific bug reports that explain the accessibility defects in ways that make sense to developers who may not be accessibility experts themselves.

Question 59

Testing by Users with Disabilities

Answer 59

One of the most valuable things you can do for quality assurance is have people with real disabilities test your web content. Hire some blind QA talent who are expert screen reader users, or people with low vision, or people with other kinds of disabilities. They’ll tell you whether you’ve succeeded or not, and their very presence as a member of your team will help to transform the outlook of the entire team. No longer will accessibility be a vague abstract concept. They’ll understand it at a deeper level, because they’ll be able to observe and interact with a peer with a disability.

Question 60

Recruiting and Integrating Employees with Disabilities

Answer 60

As has been noted elsewhere in this course, hiring people with disabilities can be one of the greatest ways to incorporate accessibility into the workflow. They are the true experts on what it is like to access the world with a disability.

Note that in many countries (such as the United States) it would be against the law to discriminate against people with disabilities, so in principle you should already have people with disabilities working alongside you. The reality, though, is that people with disabilities face “soft” discrimination all the time. They often are not hired for jobs that they could perform because the employer is afraid of the perceived extra costs or inconveniences that the disability may impose on the organization. The employer may not say that the reason for not hiring the person was because of a disability, but many times that is the real reason. This kind of thinking needs to change.

Question 61

Recruiting Accessibility Talent

Answer 61

Employers should advertise positions that require accessibility expertise. They could even require that the applicant be CPACC-certified. One thing to note is that you’re also going to want to give your employees the opportunity to increase their accessibility expertise, even if they advertise themselves as accessibility experts. Sometimes the “experts” have some experience but not enough to actually do the full extent of the job. That can be ok as long as you trust that the person has the capacity to learn the expertise, and as long as you give the person time and opportunities to continue learning.

Question 62

Workforce Development and Training

Answer 62

You probably already have a team of developers, testers, designers, managers, and other roles. They probably are not accessibility experts. Not all of them have to become accessibility experts, but some of them do, and all of them have to at least become aware of accessibility basics. Give your employees professional development opportunities. It’s a way to invest in your own organization, for the benefits of your clients or customers whom you serve.

Question 63

General Awareness

Answer 63

The entire team needs to be aware of the need to make things accessible, even if they are not involved in the technical aspects of accessible design. Accessibility needs to be an expectation; a normal way of thinking across the organization.

Question 64

Including the Accessibility Lead at a High Level

Answer 64

The Accessibility Lead needs to have enough authority to make a difference at a high level. There is a good chance that the decisions will impact some aspect of accessibility, and the impact may be negative if the people making the decisions don’t think through the accessibility implications.

Question 65

Assessing Legal Liability

Answer 65

Legal risk varies from one country to another, and from one industry to another. Universities, financial institutions, government entities, transportation providers, and other providers of basic services are generally held to a higher standard than some other industries, and are therefore usually at greater legal risk. The legal team will want to determine both the legal and financial risks associated with non-compliance.

Question 66

Prioritize Risks

Answer 66

Part of risk management is assessing which aspects of the design present the biggest accessibility barriers, and therefore the biggest legal risk. For example, a bank may decide that the most important part of the web site to fix first would be the customer login and access to basic account information, such as monthly statements and online payments. Other aspects of the site, such as loan application forms, mortgage calculators, or promotional materials may take second priority, to be fixed after the first priority is taken care of.

Question 67

The Public Relations Implications of Non-Compliance

Answer 67

It doesn’t look good when a business publicly fights a disability access lawsuit. Imagine a headline reading “XYZ Corporation Refuses to Make Web Site Accessible to Blind Users.” That kind of decision would be a public relations disaster. Most companies try to avoid negative publicity as much as possible, and a refusal to meet the needs of people with disabilities would be negative publicity.

To avoid negative publicity, companies can publicly demonstrate action towards addressing accessibility. One way to do this is to publish an accessibility statement that declares a company’s commitment to accessibility and shows the public that the company is actively working towards achieving accessibility. Additionally, companies can provide its stakeholders with feedback methods and processes that will help them improve accessibility and continue to implement accessibility throughout various parts of the company. The feedback a company receives from its own employees and clients can be a major contributor to enhancing accessibility within the company.

Question 68

Internal Accountability for Compliance

Answer 68

Within an organization, program and project managers need to hold people accountable for their respective roles in the accessibility process. Everyone needs to play their part.

Question 69

Buy Accessible Products

Answer 69

If you have people with disabilities working within your organization (hopefully you do), you will need to take into account the accessibility of products when you buy them, to ensure your co-workers can use them. If you don’t, you may open your business up to legal risk. More importantly, you will be restricting the capabilities of your co-workers, which isn’t good for them, and not good for the organization.

Question 70

Verifying Product Accessibility Claims

Answer 70

If a vendor claims that their product is disability-accessible, that’s a good start. It’s better than a vendor who doesn’t know what you’re talking about when you ask about disability access. But it’s not enough. Vendors can make any claim they like, whether or not it is true. You will want to verify that the claim is true. Ask for a sample or trial. Have one of your own trusted accessibility experts review the product and give a report. Compare the product to similar products by competing vendors.

After completing an accessibility review, share your results with the vendors to give them a chance to respond. You may learn some new things that you hadn’t realized before. Or your assessment will be correct, and it will be a chance for the vendor to listen to feedback and improve the product.

Question 71

VPATs (Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates)

Answer 71

In the United States, vendors can publish a VPAT to explain what parts pass the Section 508 accessibility guidelines (if any), and what parts do not (if any). Not all vendors publish VPATs, and there is no third-party quality control or verification of VPAT claims, so VPATs are limited in their reliability. You can consider the VPAT as one among many other factors when judging a product’s accessibility, but you should not consider a VPAT sufficient proof by itself.

Question 72

Requiring Accessible Outcomes in Contractual Agreements

Answer 72

It is always good practice to include an accessibility clause in any contract that will produce content or products as part of the outcome. You should ensure that the contractor knows that accessibility is a requirement, and that you will have an accessibility expert evaluate the content or product.

Question 73

Verifying Contractor Accessibility Expertise and Capacity

Answer 73

Be sure to verify that the contractor actually knows how to accomplish the accessibility goals, or that they will work with someone else who has the necessary skills. Don’t take the contractor’s word at face value unless you or someone you trust has previously verified their accessibility competence.

Question 74

Leveraging Procurement Policies to Influence Third-Party Providers

Answer 74

If you tell a vendor that you can’t use their product because it is not accessible, you can be certain that they will take note. They may not be able to fix the accessibility problem right away, but they will realize that it is an important priority for you, and that they just lost your business because of it.

Question 75

Stakeholder Management

Answer 75

One of the main tasks of a program or project manager is to manage expectations among various stakeholder groups. This involves listening to them, hearing their concerns, and identifying their priorities. Every situation will be different and will involve different sets of stakeholders.

If you are unfortunate enough to be under threat of a lawsuit, some of the most urgent stakeholder relationships will be with the lawyers and the groups represented by the lawyers. A judge, commission, or other government official or group may be another stakeholder in that situation.

In a less stressful situation, the stakeholders would include, at a minimum:

• Your design, development, and testing team
• Your clients or users, including people with disabilities
• You will want to make a list of all the important stakeholders and make sure you keep them all in mind, to some degree, throughout the process.