Embedding accessibilityscaling accessibility from specialist niche to business-as-usual (BS 8878)

Prof Jonathan Hassell (@jonhassell)

Accessibility Director, Open InclusionChair, BSI IST/45

Nationaal Congres Digitale Toegankelijkheid31st May 2016

About me…

• 14+ years experience in accessibility and inclusion • Accessibility Director, Open Inclusion

• advising some of the largest companies in the world in embedding accessibility:

• product Manager of innovative, award-winning products • former Head of Usability & Accessibility, BBC Future Media • lead author of UK Accessibility Standards BS 8878 • lead editor for internationalising BS 8878 into

1 The good news:

Accessibility is in demand

Large companies are taking accessibility seriouslyand are having trouble finding the right people to hire

2 The bad news:

Nobody makes it on their own

Being an “accessibility superhero” may not be all it’s cracked up to be…

You may have many successes bringing accessibility to your work and your colleague’s work…

But you’ll also have numerous frustrations where the products you create don’t live up to your values…

as the people you were working with or for didn’t share those values…

or it was too late or too difficult to get what you want done

You want to do less work, and have more impact…

• to be expected to take accessibility seriously by your organization’s product managers

• to be in a team where each member knows what accessibility expects from them • to be asked to follow a user-centred design process • to have a place to find best practice help for accessible design beyond the web • to be given real-world user-research to help your decision making • to be empowered to make sensible accessibility decisions, as long as you can

justify them, and write them down • to have the freedom to create product variations where users’ needs diverge • to be encouraged to test products for accessibility, alongside usability, to the level

the budget will allow • and to be freed from the impossibility of doing everything you could possibly do

for v1.0, as long as you tell your audience why & when they’ll get what they need

Because how you really want to work is this…

Into one that values inclusive user-centred design…

You want to convert a world that’s fixated on checklists...

Visualdesigners Writers

Project managers

Product managers

Finance Legal Marketing Strategy

TestersDevelopersInteraction designers

Information architects

You need to engage everyone who makes your products,not just the accessibility superhero

C-suite

Or you’ll eventually burn out and leave…bad for you, bad for your organization

Or you’ll manage, get bored and leave for another challenge…good for you, bad for your organization

Being ‘good at accessibility’ isn’t enough You need to convince others to join you

And you need to know how to make your collaboration successful

What actual success in accessibility looks like…

• Not doing a good job making a product accessible • Not enabling all your organization’s products to be accessible • For you to be successful, you actually have to prepare your organisation for

your exit • Success should be measured on whether they can still carry on without you • That what you brought has become ‘just the way we work around here’ when

no-one left can remember your name • That’s how we define success at Open Inclusion

So how do you get there from here…?

Expand Embed

Enable Effects

Summarised in the four E’s

3 EXPAND

Find your organisation’s accessibility motivation

sweet spot

Who needs to be motivated for you to get what you want?

Visualdesigners Writers

Project managers

Product managers

Finance Legal Marketing Strategy

TestersDevelopersInteraction designers

Information architects

C-suite

Convert the person at the top, or convert them all

Visualdesigners Writers

Project managers

Product managers

Finance Legal Marketing Strategy

TestersDevelopersInteraction designers

Information architects

C-suite

How will you convince them to spend time on accessibility rather than something else…?

Legal Ethical ROI Innovation

Four potential reasons…

So make it accessibility about winning

Avoiding losingdoesn’t really motivate…

Success means firing on all four cylinders…

& & &

All Government Retail Product

… and choosing your emphasis depending onwhat your organization does…

Compliance CSR Prod Mgt Corp Strategy

… and choosing your emphasis depending onthe part of your organization you’re selling to

4 EMBED

Embed competence across your organisation

In your organization, do your staff & policies facilitate or inhibit delivery of accessibility?

Responsibility

Competence and confidence

Governance

Policy

Support

What you need to embed in your organisation

Embedding responsibility

Visualdesigners Writers

Project managers

Product managers

Finance Legal Marketing Strategy

TestersDevelopersInteraction designers

Information architects

C-suite

• Work out whose responsibility accessibility should ultimately be…

• Appoint: • An exec champion

(to get buy-in and budget)

• An accessibility programme manager (to use that to make things happen)

• Make sure they delegate well

Embedding competence

Visualdesigners Writers

Project managers

Product managers

Finance Legal Marketing Strategy

TestersDevelopersInteraction designers

Information architects

C-suite

• Make sure those delegated to have clear guidelines for what they need to do to fulfil their accessibility responsibilities • split accessibility guidelines

via job-role

• Make sure they are trained in their responsibilities • split accessibility training

via job-role • prioritise training to those

who have most impact, and are furthest away from the competence level they need

Embedding support

Visualdesigners Writers

Project managers

Product managers

Finance Legal Marketing Strategy

TestersDevelopersInteraction designers

Information architects

C-suite

• Identify competences and functions you should keep in-house, and which you should outsource • train staff in the things that

don’t change; outsource advice on edge-cases

• keep QA in-house; outsource accessibility audit

• Get the support you need, but make sure you don’t become dependent on externals in anything that you should be growing competence for in-house

Embedding into key policies

Visualdesigners Writers

Project managers

Product managers

Finance Legal Marketing Strategy

TestersDevelopersInteraction designers

Information architects

C-suite

• Create an Organizational Web Accessibility Policy to strategically embed accessibility into the organisation’s policies

• Should include where accessibility is embedded in: • web procurement policy • web technology policy • marketing guidelines • web production standards

(e.g. compliance with WCAG, browser support, AT support)

Standard accessibility section for ITTs/RFPs

and contracts

Top level business case & organisational

accessibility policy p level business case

& organisational accessibility policy

Website accessibility statement template

Branding and visual style guides

Start with the most strategically valuable policies…

• Work out what products to monitor – your digital portfolio

• Categorise products by • importance to you and your users • the degree of accessibility required

• Prioritise enablers and pillars; be more relaxed with innovators

• Choose your metrics to provide the level of assurance you require for the cost you can afford • what to measure

[WCAG, actual usability of products for disabled people]

• how often you’ll measure

• Make sure you do actions based on the data – will you hold staff accountable?

Embedding governance

Competence (guidelines & training)

Policies

Governance

Motivation & responsibility

2016

2016

2016

2016

2016

Support

2017

2017

2017

2017

2017

Benchmark where you are, where you wish to be, and the costs & benefits of getting there; prioritise where you’ll get most value for money

5 ENABLE

Enable product accessibility through a

consistent process

You need to fix problems in the process, not the product, to prevent them re-occurring…

Your process should allow you to plan for efficient accessibility delivery, and ensure everyone knows what to do & when through the product’s full lifecycle

Your process should be flexible, and mould itself around your product/project, not the other way around…

How the cost of fixing defects depends on when you find them (Bill Graham)

We all know cost-efficiency is all about planning, and testing early and often

Different times when we use them…Different testing methodologies…

So we plan in sprints… and create test plans using different types of testing at different points in the process

Lab-baseduser-testing

Cost

Reliability of findings

Automatedtesting against guidelines

Testing with assistive technologies

Remotetesting

‘Guerilla’testing

Cognitive walkthrough by expert

Exclusion audit by untrained team

Testing against heuristics or guidelines (e.g. WCAG)

Estimatedcost vs. reliability of findings

However we often only use 1 or 2 accessibility testing methodologies when many more exist

INTERNAL

Efficient accessibility:work & testing

Often the case accessibility:work & testing(total work = 1.4 x efficient)

WorkQAAudit

WorkQAAudit

And accessibility effort and testing are often overlooked/underestimated in planning…

We need to get rid of unnecessary pain, not cause it…

1 Starting strategically

2 Planning implementation effectively

3 Prioritising remediation

4 Launch, and post-launch planning

via 4 strategic accessibility project management workshops

Starting with the end in mind…

Workshop 4: How do you know your product’s accessibility is good enough for launch?

Actual accessibility:work & testing Work

QAAudit

You’re almost at launch, and you still have open issues… what do you do?

Workshop 3: How to handle test results and prioritise issue remediation

Actual accessibility:work & testing Work

QAAudit

You’re in mid-development, and you’ve found 60 issues… what do you do?

Workshop 2: How to embed accessibilityin implementation and test planning

INTERNAL

Efficient accessibility:work & testing

Often the case accessibility:work & testing(total work = 1.4 x efficient)

WorkQAAudit

WorkQAAudit

Planning for efficiency from the start - estimating amount of accessibility work, planning efficient testing

Workshop 1: How to start the project on firm foundations

6 key strategic decisions (BS 8878 steps 7-12) about accessibility aims, technologies and approaches…

… based on 6 key aspects of the product (BS 8878 steps 1-6) - its purpose, user goals, audience needs & preferences

6 EFFECTS

Keep things going by monitoring

Return on Investment

All of this accessibility work costs… so you need to continually prove it’s worth continuing with

Risk mitigation value- what penalties are you insured against…?

• USA: – NFB vs. Target, 2006 – $6m – NAD vs. Netflix, 2013 – $755k – DOJ and NFB vs. H&R Block, 2014 – $145k

• Australia: – Maguire vs. SOCOG, 2000 – $20,000

But not on how to do that…Risk mitigation value- what brand threats are you insured against…?

Difficult to prove the value of the premium, until you need to claim

Impact on organization’s brand – PR value of awards and positive press coverage

Impact on organization’s brand– minimising customer complaints (capture via email, survey)

Opportunity cost savings of not having to provide alternatives

Ability to sell your digital tools into markets where accessibility is a procurement requirement

1. Establish relative value of google rankings

2. Benchmark current ranking

5. And don’t pay us until we get you there

4. We’ll tell you how much it will cost

3. Tell us where you want to rank

Learn from how other industries sell their benefits… (e.g SEO)

So, to help prove ROI, we need to start counting, like everybody else does

Make it we not me Find tailored ways of motivating your staff Get buy-in from the top Make training job-specific Embed in policies Embed a process to make it repeatable Prove its worth to keep it going

1. Make it we not me

2. Find tailored ways of motivating your staff

5. Embed in policies

6. Embed a process to make it repeatable

4. Make training job-specific

11million

7. Prove its worth to keep it going

3. Get buy-in from the top

Top 7 take-aways

For information on the complete guide, visit:http://openinclusion.com/book/

• complete guide to embedding accessibility using BS 8878 • plus interviews with leading accessibility experts worldwide,

including: • Jennison Asuncion (Canada) • Debra Ruh, Lainey Feingold,

Jeff Kline, Shawn Henry (USA) • Andrew Arch (Australia) • David Banes (Qatar) • Axel Leblois (UN) • Makoto Ueki (Japan) • Steve Green (UK)

for your questionsjonathan@openinclusion.com@jonhassell