Tailoring Accessibility Training to Individual Roles

Introduction

One of the best ways to ensure a successful web accessibility training effort is to more carefully consider the roles, tasks, tools, and skills people need to create more accessible digital products. Doing this before scheduling or securing training will go a long way toward ensuring the time and money invested delivers the best return.

In principle, this exercise is straightforward.

1. Specify a role.
2. Identify the tasks that someone with this role is expected to do.
3. Identify the tools someone in that role uses to do their job.
4. Use that information to identify specific accessibility skills they need.
5. Work back from those points to identify training they need to be successful.

Role Example

As an example, let's quickly examine an administrative coordinator:

Tasks and Tools:

Creates documents in Microsoft Word and presentations in PowerPoint. Periodically updates the department's website in the content management system (CMS).

Skills:

Properly using and creating headings, lists, descriptive link text, alternative text, data tables, understanding proper color use, and knowing how to create accessible Office documents and PDFs.

Based on that information, it's clear that this administrative coordinator needs to learn how to create accessible content in Office and the CMS. Since they use Word and PowerPoint for the majority of their work, training them on the concepts and techniques in Office may be the best place to start. There may be a need for some introductory training about PDF accessibility—depending on the complexity of documents created. Since they occasionally use the CMS, they may benefit from a brief training module on using their CMS, but a multi-hour training on web accessibility techniques (like creating forms) would not be a good use of their time.

An organization can start this role mapping process with a smaller group of employees and expand to the rest of the company over time. Identify the roles most critical to creating and influencing the organization's digital presence and perform this exercise with them first. Many organizations have structures where several individual roles are consolidated into larger groups. Where possible, organizations should map training to these broader groups first. Over time, the organization should move to individual roles and become more granular when deciding how to implement accessibility training.

Benefits

There are several benefits to putting in more thought before scheduling training.

Better alignment between the skills taught and the skills required.

It is also easier for people to build on what they already know. Matching training topics to skills required to do the job is critical and underpins several additional benefits.

Better engagement and uptake.

When people participate in professional development, teaching them skills they can immediately apply will naturally make them more active learners. As an example, if someone uses Microsoft Word regularly, it is easier for them to learn how to make a Word document more accessible because they are already familiar with the Word interface.

Learned skills are more readily applied and practiced.

Since the skills learned are in a familiar context, it is much easier for learners to begin using them. People need time to practice new skills and figure out how to apply them in their day-to-day work.

Better use of the trainer's time.

Training that isn't carefully mapped to roles may take longer or may need to be repeated. For internal trainers, this creates an opportunity cost, in addition to salary, benefits, etc. For external trainers, this leads to higher training costs.

Better use of the learner's time.

It doesn't make sense for employees to learn skills that they will never use in the workplace. Keeping trainings relevant will mean less time wasted by employees trying to independently learn the daily skills they need.

Less pushback from learners about working new skills into their day-to-day duties.

Requiring training that is not relevant to them can quickly build resistance to accessibility work in general. For example, in most organizations, few people need to know PDF accessibility and remediation at a granular level. Requiring everyone who handles PDFs to participate in a deep-dive PDF accessibility training can build resistance to accessibility work in general.

Earlier recognition of problematic authoring or design tools.

This is an often-overlooked benefit of going through this exercise. If the tool is the problem, no amount of training will be effective. Some design and authoring tools still can't export an accessible format. Some tools also don't support basic accessibility practices, such as adding alternative text or marking an image as decorative. Identifying these tools as problematic helps organizations find alternatives, so the tools don't limit people's ability to create accessible content and interactions.

An added bonus: one of the most effective ways to advance accessibility work is to formally integrate it into job descriptions. This role-mapping exercise exposes the accessibility skills required across roles throughout the organization. In turn, this creates an opportunity to add accessibility knowledge into job descriptions. The ripple effects are far-reaching and can help drive engagement with the training that an organization plans to provide.

Conclusion

To summarize, training efforts need to be carefully planned and executed to be effective and advance accessibility within an organization. The benefits of planning a training effort more carefully are well worth the effort. And remember, it doesn't have to happen all at once. Identifying the key roles and starting with them can make the effort more manageable.