Building Accessibility Training Programs that Work

Introduction

Training is a key component of a sustainable web accessibility program and must be carefully planned and managed.

While we will focus on training in this article, it is just one of the many puzzle pieces organizations need to assemble. Our Roadmap to Meeting the ADA Title II Requirements provides a broader perspective.

One of the challenges organizations face with web accessibility is that the people they hire often don’t bring much knowledge or experience in this domain. The gap in education and training about accessibility is still large enough that organizations must prepare to fill it by providing training and ongoing support.

Considerations when designing an effective training initiative include:

• Setting reasonable expectations
• Carefully aligning training with roles and responsibilities
• Accounting for the additional workload that training and new knowledge may add
• The logistics of delivering training content
• The necessary ongoing support
• The motivation of training participants

Take a Role-Based Approach

Carefully aligning training content with people’s roles and responsibilities ensures they learn the right skills as efficiently as possible. This also makes the best use of people’s scarce time and helps keep motivation to engage training higher. Some roles are obvious candidates for accessibility training. If you’re a web development or design agency, your developers and quality assurance staff might be the first groups that come to mind. If you’re in an educational setting, you’ll quickly identify web professionals and other technical roles.

A variety of other roles also need relevant training, though their needs may be less apparent. Be sure your organization trains a wide range of roles by performing a role-mapping exercise. The table below is an example of the output of this exercise, showing roles and topics that may be relevant to them. This will vary based on the specific responsibilities and roles you have.

Track the Impact

Develop ways to track how well training is working. If your organization already has a way to track existing training participation, start there. If no tracking system exists, start one. Tracking data is critical for gaining insight into motivation and engagement, as well as what’s working and what needs improvement.

If you have a web-based learning management system (LMS) for training, it should have tools to let you do this. Things like quizzes or assessments capture how individual participants grasp concepts. An LMS will let you ask learners questions as they progress through the training content.

Organizations without a learning management system can still use assessments. Surveys also provide insight into learners' progress. A survey lets you ask about training formats, durations, relevance, etc. Finally, you can use accessibility evaluations of the content your staff creates, updates, and maintains to observe how training translates to their day-to-day work.

Logistics

There are a number of formats and structures available to help us provide training. Web-based training, whether in an LMS or not, lets you reach hybrid and remote employees more easily and at a larger scale. You can also record remote synchronous training for attendees to revisit, and to include those who couldn’t participate in real time.

While in-person training demands more resources and may limit participation, it tends to foster better engagement between learners and the training content. It also lessens the distractions people have when they’re online, like responding to email or Slack.

You can also create less formal opportunities, such as brown-bag lunches or dedicating a few minutes of a team meeting to learning a new accessibility skill. These also complement more formal approaches well.

Someone needs to lead training efforts, including managing and delivering training in whichever format, or formats, you choose. Many organizations begin training by utilizing third-party trainers. That may also be the way forward over time. Others lean on a train-the-trainer model, equipping some of their staff to build in-house training capacity. A mix of third-party and in-house trainers can help train on a wider range of topics.

A reason to continue leveraging third-party trainers, at least in part, is the pace of technological change. Organizations without established technical and web content training programs can struggle to stay current with changes in authoring, design, and development tools. Common tools like Microsoft Office and Zoom are constantly evolving. This means that any trainers need to stay current with changes so training remains up to date. Even organizations with dedicated training staff may not have the resources (or choose not to invest them) required to keep materials current.

Then there is the question of whether to include accessibility in existing training or to provide accessibility-specific training. Including at least some accessibility knowledge in more general training, like training on using a content management system, can be helpful because the materials will be widely used. It also places accessibility alongside other skills and techniques, normalizing it as an expectation.

There are advantages to accessibility-only training. Usually, this is more in-depth than when the topics are integrated with general training. It also allows the content to build from one topic to the next. This approach makes it easier to focus more on the human experience and the needs of people with disabilities. As with other logistics, your approach may rely on both and change over time.

In the end, what works best depends on factors such as budget, staff size, available resources, and expertise.

Incentivize Participation

People need a reason to dedicate time and brain space to participating in training, even if it’s intentionally short and narrowly focused. While some are motivated to learn about accessibility by internal factors (e.g., a close relationship with a person with disabilities), others may need some external incentives.

Incentives don’t have to require much financial investment. Recognition can be a strong motivator. Anything from digital badges to a certificate of completion can encourage people to engage. Other forms of public recognition, such as acknowledgment of the recent graduates of a training class in a weekly email, can also be helpful.

Requiring training creates stronger motivation, as people can face sanctions if they do not participate. Many organizations have a set of required annual training. Training on accessibility during that annual training ensures people will participate.

A more comprehensive approach involves adding relevant accessibility skills to job descriptions. This is a bigger effort for sure, but it sets a clearer vision for how accessibility fits into people’s work. When organizations do this, they usually commit to providing training as a part of onboarding and in ongoing forms. Since performance is measured and rewarded based on the responsibilities and requirements in job descriptions, there is a natural incentive for people to sharpen their skills. (This is also an excellent way to clearly state that accessibility is an expectation across an organization, which has additional benefits.)

Account for Time

One of the biggest inhibitors to accessibility training and more general accessibility efforts is time. People need time to participate in learning, no matter the format. That’s usually well understood. But it doesn’t stop when the training is complete. People need time to practice what they learned and to discover how it fits into their regular work. While organizations may account for the time to participate in training, the additional time afterwards often isn’t there.

This can happen for several reasons. Leadership and management may not appreciate the need for people to dedicate time to practice. They may expect work to continue at the same pace before and after training happens. They may not consider the workload on training participants when scheduling training to begin with, and schedule during a particularly busy time. In any of these instances, learners complete training but don’t have the chance to really put learning into practice. No matter how high-quality the training is, the end result is that people don't build their skills as well as expected.

Leadership needs to understand that they need to support learners by accounting for time more fully. There is usually a ripple effect where team, department, and unit leadership all gain this understanding and account for the operational impact. This will need to continue to higher levels of leadership as well, so the pace of work is better managed. The whole training effort will also be more carefully managed, planned, and supported, with more levels of leadership actively facilitating.

Conclusion

Successful accessibility training programs are just one critical piece of the accessibility puzzle. Carefully planning a program and considering it holistically will dramatically reduce the risk that training won't work. However, as with other pieces of the puzzle, it’s one that may not begin perfectly, but still must begin.Successful accessibility training programs are just one critical piece of the accessibility puzzle. Carefully planning a program and considering it holistically will dramatically reduce the risk that training won't work. However, as with other pieces of the puzzle, it’s one that may not begin perfectly, but still must begin.