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How to Eat an Elephant: Tackling Web Accessibility in a Large Corporation

Elle Waters & Lisa BarnettHumana Inc.03/16/2011

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Our corporate context

Accessibility program case study:Humana Inc.

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Humana background

• Fortune 100 Company (and moving up!)

• 29,000 employees

• Over 11 million customers in U.S.

• 140+ web properties

• Fast, organic growth of company, and evolving business model

• Decentralized, cost-center structure

• Questions about “who owns the web” and who “owns user experience” and what those mean

• Consumer focus and aggressive initiatives to improve user experience and engagement

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Our initial questions

• Who?

• What?

• When?

• Where?

• How?

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Challenges and Benefits

• Lack of Infrastructure

• Unscalable process

• Institutional complexity

• Large Medicare customer base

• Consumer focus

• Progressive attitude

• Flexible roles

Challenges we face

Benefits we enjoy

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Our experience standing upa new program

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Accessibility program case study:Humana Inc.

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Our approach and business case

• Motivation

• Positioning

• Communication

Elements of our business case

• Risk analysis

• Improved senior usability

• Standardized coding

• Additional benefits

• Planning for change

• Recommendations

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We looked internally for something similar :

Information Security as a model

• Neither "Business" nor IT

• Perceived as specialists and experts

• Represent and protect the whole enterprise

• Has non-negotiable success criteria

• Acts as consultants throughout the project lifecycle

• Assessed risk to the enterprise and impacts to other areas

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How we assessed risk

• Visibility

• Audience

• Customer expectations

• Regulatory oversight

V I

S I

B I

L I

T Y

O V E R S I G H T

HighestRisk

LowestRisk

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How we prioritized and scheduled effort

• Risk level – defined internally

• Effort required to remediate

• Alignment with other initiatives and projects, including complete redesigns

• Level of training required for development staff

• Available budget for work

• Input from business units

• The changing legal landscape

• Results of automated testing

• How “broken” is it? Is critical path executable?

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Our integration into Humana’s SDLC

• Found an advocate!

• Focused on quantitative – testing requirements

• High visibility

• Leveraged IT’s Process Tailoring Assessment

- Identify projects and business partners

- Helped with prioritization, planning, funding

• Reciprocation with Marketing visibility for SDLC• IT team contact, good for training invite list• Workflows and processes we could use• Demonstration of collaborative spirit

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We needed a business testing tool

• Alignment with SDLC - use same criteria to monitor projects after launch

• Extends "life cycle" to sunsetting, practically

• Status reports to leadership and compliance

• Supports standardization of code

• Provides defensible documentation

• Can test for some brand standards

• Alignment between accessibility and usability may be possible, integrating our site metrics

• Saves money on automated testing

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Our biggest “wins”

• Collaboration with IT

• Integration into our SDLC

• Finding a great accessibility partner

• Leveraging existing model (IT Security)

• Our partnership and combined strengths

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Initial learnings

• Plant seeds and cultivate what grows!

• A single vendor for both software and consulting streamlines process AND communication

• Effective relationships with the right people dramatically sped our progress

• Sometimes, the right people aren’t interested

• Accessibility can further other people’s goals

• Implementation is a good first-year focus; position usability as an innate benefit of accessibility

• Competitive benchmarking is helpful to show opportunity in the marketplace

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HumanResources

• Diversity & Inclusion

• ADA Coordinator

• Associate Intranet

• Workspace Solutions

IT

• IT (different business units)

• Enterprise architecture

• SDLC

• ITLS

• IT Security

• CSS

Marketing

• Support for each business unit

• Social networking

• SEO

Misc/other

• Procurement

• Humana Military

• Strategic & Corporate Communication

• Agent/Broker support

• Customer Care

Legal

• Legal

• Compliance

• Vendor contracts and management

HumanaWeb Accessibility & Usability Program

Humana’s Decentralized Business Model

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Why a Marketing/IT partnership works for us

• Maintains user-centered design approach, and addresses needs of implementation teams

• Better acceptance and comprehension of requirements by business units

• Greater consistency

• Shared costs

• Better integration and collaboration between design and development

• More visibility across the company

• Shared credit for success is highly motivating

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Recommendations

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Accessibility program case study:Humana Inc.

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What we wish we’d known when we started

• People looked to us for leadership

• Enterprise-level, accessibility management software acquisition should happen early

• Regulatory Compliance could have helped get the right people in the room together

• People want, and can understand accessibility standards with testable criteria

• We would need to be familiar with the budgeting process

• IT could be our champion

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Questions?

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Deque, the experts, are here!

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Additional notes

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Top ten things to get started

1. Start with just 2 or 3 people from different parts of the company: Marketing, Compliance and IT are great candidates

2. Get a high-level audit to show the severity of the problem and to support the business case

3. Find a great consulting partner and engage them early in the process to make recommendations and strategize with you

4. Put together a good business case and present it strategically to people who can help you

5. Get a pilot project started and train a core team of developers

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Top ten things to get started

6. Partner with IT leadership and meet regularly

7. Leverage existing processes, documentation and models

8. Look for a model within your company that you can leverage

9. Define realistic goals for the first year, estimate the cost and present it to leadership

10.Build accessibility requirements into all RFPs for contract development

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Prioritization established for years 1 and 2

Foundation to support accessibility across the enterprise in place

Accessibility policy, standards and guidelines developed and socialized(usability standards still in development)

Accountability and enforcement protocol established

• Tools to monitor progress in place (in progress)

• Ability to generate defensible documentation (in progress)

• Basic training in place to support Year 1 goals (in progress)

• Training planned to support year 2 goals

Process in place to review, assess and plan remediation for proposed acquisitions and procurements

System in place to respond to customer complaints

• Plans in place to manage change (in progress)

Our progress to date

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Deque’s Accessibility Roadmap

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8-Step Implementation Model

From WebAIM.org:

1: Gather Baseline Information

2: Gain Top Level Support

3: Organize a Web Accessibility Committee

4: Define a Standard

5: Create an Implementation Plan

6: Provide Training and Technical Support

7: Monitor Conformance

8: Remain Flexible Through the Changes