How to champion accessibility
How to Champion Accessibility and Foster Systemic Change (YouTube)
The five key things for any team producing content to practise accessibility:
- The inclination
- The time
- The knowledge
- The automation and tools
- The availability of expert resources for future changes
The inclination to practise accessibility
- Obtain executive buy-in
- Create and enforce an accessibility policy
- Execute on an ongoing empathy (awareness) campaign
- Attend and host empathy (awareness) events
Obtain executive buy-in
Four pillars of benefit (ROI) for becoming accessible:
- Increased market share (people with disabilities have disposable income ~$500B in U.S.)
- Increased social (justice) alignment (the right thing to do, period)
- Decreased operational costs (everyone can use digital)
- Decreased risk (pesky lawsuits abound)
Create and enforce an accessibility policy
An internal accessibility policy could contain:
- Incremental implementation
- Flexibility
- Exceptions
- Measurement/tracking
- Accountability
Ongoing awareness campaign
Many people are not aware of accessibility and its positive impact.
Raise awareness by showing the link between
- disabilities — how people might interact differently with your content
- assistive tech — what people might use to interact with your content
- accessibility — how you design your content for all users and work seamlessly with assistive technology
Activities
- Awareness labs — virtual or physical
- Use GAAD as an occasion for events
- Periodic reinforcement through ongoing communication plan
Risk management
- Due to ‘x’…
- There is a risk that ‘y’…
- Resulting in ‘z’…
e.g. Due to a lack of multi-year funding, there is a risk that funding in subsequent years might not be adequate for the roadmap, resulting in a failure to meet multi-year goals or backsliding in quality.
Things that can go wrong:
- Failure to get executive backing
- Failure to involve all stakeholders
- Policy is too strict too fast
- Policy has no exception process
- Policy doesn’t track exceptions
- Policy doesn’t assign accountability
Mitigate risks based on level of probability and impact.
Framework for action
- Risk process to get your risks (ongoing)
- 4 pillars of opportunity/benefit/ROI: market share, social justice, operational cost, risk mitigation
- Direct costs i.e. internal person-hours
- Extended costs e.g. more hiring, tooling, education