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Re: Internal tool accessibility justifications

for

From: Tim Harshbarger
Date: Sep 25, 2017 6:36AM

If your friend does some searches on the archive of this forum, they should find plenty of past discussions of this topic.

When it comes to technical benefits of accessibility, those are the same for both external and internal applications.

The business benefits mostly boil down to being that accessible applications make it possible for employees with disabilities to contribute to and participate in the organization fully.

I will add that I think it is a lot easier to create accessible applications than it is to purchase them. When your organization is designing and developing an application, you have the ability to introduce the level of accessibility you want at every step. With purchased products, you are at the mercy of what that company may or may not know about accessibility. Also, there really isn't any simple way to evaluate a product's accessibility claims.

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From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of <EMAIL REMOVED>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2017 2:24 AM
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Subject: [WebAIM] Internal tool accessibility justifications

All,



I am sending this on behalf of a friend. I have done my own research into it
and only found resources related to public facing web sites or tools being
sold. The angle they are coming from is for internal tools in the company to
include accessibility in the development cycle and purchasing of third-party
products. The products are not only web base. Here is his request:





My team has been tasked with creating an document for internal consumption
on accessibility for internal software, hardware and documentation. One of
the goals is to stress the important of accessibility and to get a buy in
from the senior managers in my organization. The scope of the document is
across all technologies used by our employee's. I am aware of the USA, EU,
Australian and other laws plus the EU accessibility standard, Section 508
standard and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines which I am planning to
introduce into the document as part of the business and technical benefits.
The challenge I am finding is finding strong justifications other than legal
and best practice. As I want to include more convincing benefits than legal
risks in the document. We are a private international company and some of
the resources I have seen are very governmental focus. Areas of challenge
are:

. Business benefits for accessibility

. Technical benefits for accessibility

. Purchasing decisions for external tools, internal tools build
on third-party vendor development environments, in-house software built by
our own resources.

If anyone has policy, guidance and procedural documents you can share or
point me too. I would be very grateful. As I am sure this has been done
before and would help me in my endeavor. If you have any other
justifications, please also share.



Sean