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Re: internal accessibility guidelines

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From: Denis Boudreau
Date: Jun 9, 2014 11:52AM

Hi everyone,

I have been involved with organizations that implemented their own internal accessibility standards based on existing W3C guidelines, organizations that had tasked me with writing an accessibility standard for them based on those same existing W3C guidelines and finally, organizations that decided to simply align to WCAG 2.0 without any modifications to the requirements language used. Regardless of the strategy used, I can say that the challenges faced usually boil down to the same things.

I have found that generally speaking, it's not so much the technical aspects of accessibility that are difficult to get right or implement. If you are dedicated enough to provide the proper tools and training to your team, developers and other stakeholders will figure it out eventually. It can be a bumpy ride of course, but if your organization is willing to accept that the learning curve takes time and requires efforts,that you won’t get it perfect the first time, and stakeholders are provided with everything they need to be successful, it is totally achievable in the long run.

To me, the main challenges have always been about the mindset, regardless of the policy strategy adopted: when your leadership provides winning conditions - brews the perfect a11y storm - where accessibility compliance and digital inclusion are identified as common cohesive goals do we start seeing a real impact. Before that, at best, it’s going to amount to cumulative isolated efforts that don’t bring any real global results. And none of it is certainly sustainable either.

When there is sufficient upper management buy-in to accessibility, an organization slowly stops thinking about accessibility as a project with a start and end date, and begins to look at it as an ongoing process that can be integrated into the DNS of an organization, just like security and all these other good things managers take seriously. Only when accessibility becomes a program implemented in the organization’s culture does it stand a real chance of success.

That being said, my experience so far tell me that organizations that create their own internal standard tend to be more likely to invest in the effort, because there’s a sense of ownership that goes beyond the simple external requirement. It becomes their baby and as such, somehow seems to have more value.

My $0.05 canadian cents (because we ditched the pennies a while ago).

/Denis



On Jun 9, 2014, at 6:05 AM, Tim Harshbarger < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> I expect the best way to set up internal standards will first depend on if you have to rely on the current organization or if you have the ability to make some changes to the internal organization and culture.
>
> If you could make any changes you want, I expect there are some really great ways to set up internal processes. My favorite would probably include integrating all user interface standards together into a perfect seamless whole. I agree with Elle. An internal standard does have the potential of being able to change more rapidly as long as the process for maintaining and improving the standard is an active one.
>
> I also agree with Brian. If you have internal standards, they are going to be more directly impacted by internal pressures and considerations. That is likely to lead to some compromises. I'm not sure the compromises are all bad, but if you are going to create your standards internally you probably need to think through how to limit the compromises to the good ones.
>
> I think another challenge of creating internal standards is having a full understanding of how the internal standards relate to the external standards. Are you trying to merge multiple external standards? Is your internal standard intended to be an interpretation of an external standard written specifically for your internal audience?
>
> Tim
>