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Re: enterprise-level accessibility evangelism

for

From: Jewell, John H
Date: Jun 9, 2010 12:27PM

Katherine,

I would suggest that one of the first steps is understanding at least at
some level how the company works, both in general and specifically with
its web operations. Some corporations - like some large government
agencies - are highly structured so that identifying where to introduce
web accessibility is key. Others are highly diversified, with each part
considering themselves relatively independent and unique; their web
operations can be just as diverse with many web masters who may have a
varying degree of autonomy. It helps to have a sense of both the formal
organization chart and the real power structure, how decisions are made,
how management and staff want or need to see the business case for
decision making, etc. There may be previous projects - either successes
or failures - that help you understand what works within that company.

It may also help you identify useful examples of relevant corporate web
accessibility or lack of accessibility. For example, the Target lawsuit
and subsequent settlement make a good case for web shopping models.

It is my experience that you begin best by listening and understanding
the business/community, then developing the model and approach for
digital accessibility that works for that setting, whether in the
corporate or government world.

John Jewell

-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Katherine
Mancuso
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2010 3:41 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: [WebAIM] enterprise-level accessibility evangelism

Hi Web-AIMers -

Long time reader, first time questioner, please be gentle :-).

Does anyone here have a lot of experience with introducing web
accessibility into a corporation?

I'm not going to tell you where I'm working this summer for fear of
trouble, but this is a large division of a large company responsible
for hundreds of professional web properties - a company that also
makes physical facilities and prides themselves on them being
accessible to many different kinds of people including people with
disabilities, and that in the future sees physical-digital convergence
as a huge business initiative. They have one web creative lead
working on accessibility as a side project, who isn't really trained
but wants to evangelize for the importance of this. And me, as an
intern, who also has other responsibilities. The main thing the two
of us have agreed I need to do here is make the case for
accessibility, and for people to work more full-time on it, or to
bring in a company as a contractor that specializes in this, by doing
a lot of teaching to a lot of people.

However, I've always worked at a small research center focused on
accessibility; I've taken classes but none of them covered enterprise
level web accessibility (there's one chapter in the big pink web
accessibility book). I have a big job. I know what the legal issues
are, and how to make the business case, how to teach about universal
design, and the basics I need to teach them. The thing I don't know
is the kind of processes I need to recommend to an organization this
large, and how accessibility work is different at this scale.

I need pointers to resources that will help me: people who might be
willing to talk to me who have done this kind of work, things I should
read about enterprise level work, listservs I should be on, etc.

In addition to general resources, specific questions for now, more may
follow later:
1) We need to convince the company to buy one of the large
accessibility packages that operates with their bug tracker to clean
up the static web pages. What factors do we need to
consider/understand in evaluating which one we should recommend?
2) Has anyone done a workshop specifically for a QA team? What factors
do I need to consider with this audience that I might not think about
in a general web accessibility tutorial?

thanks so very much,
Katherine

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Katherine Mancuso: crusader of community art, social technology, &
disability

Research:
Center for Assistive Technology & Environmental Access
(http://www.catea.org)
Georgia Tech, Digital Media (http://dm.gatech.edu)

Community:
The Vesuvius Group: metaverse community builders
(http://www.thevesuviusgroup.com)
Gimp Girl Community Liaison/Research Fellow (http://www.gimpgirl.com)
Alternate ROOTS: arts*community*activism (http://www.alternateroots.org)
Students Working Against Negative Stereotypes of Autism, Georgia Tech.
( <EMAIL REMOVED> )

Contact in the web, the metaverse, the world:
http://twitter.com/musingvirtual
http://muse.dreamwidth.org
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kathymancuso
SL: Muse Carmona
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