Designing a Digital Accessibility Program

Organizations worldwide establish digital accessibility programs for various reasons. Some aim to ensure their products comply with local laws such as the ADA, Section 508, AODA, and ACA. Others take a more comprehensive approach, focusing on improving the experience for customers with disabilities beyond just meeting compliance standards.

Organizations often encounter challenges during the setup process, regardless of their motivations.

1. Lack of Awareness: Many stakeholders do not fully understand the significance of digital accessibility or the needs of individuals with disabilities. This lack of understanding hinders the cultural shift toward creating a more accessible organization.
2. Priority and Resources: The lack of awareness often extends to leadership, which can lead to accessibility being deprioritized. As a result, insufficient resources are allocated to accessibility initiatives.
3. Skill Gap: Developers, designers, testers, and content writers may not possess the necessary skills to build accessible organizations. Continuous learning and training are essential for keeping the workforce updated on the latest standards and technological advancements.
4. Availability of Tools: Identifying and acquiring the appropriate development and testing tools that align with the organization’s technology landscape is crucial for creating accessible products. However, there is often a lack of guidance and expertise concerning which tools to use, hindering team productivity. The W3C currently lists over 160 different accessibility evaluation tools, such as Wave, Axe, Accessibility Insights, and Infosys Accessibility Testing Tool, making it challenging to find the right tool(s) for the organization’s needs.
5. Knowledge Sharing: Best practices and knowledge gained during projects often remain confined within individual teams and do not reach the broader organization for learning and reuse. Documenting and standardizing these practices is time-consuming and frequently overlooked.
6. User Testing: Effective implementation of accessibility requires testing with real users to understand the diverse needs of individuals with disabilities. However, this process can be logistically challenging and is often neglected.
7. Burnout: Responsibilities for implementing accessibility are typically assigned to a specific role or a small group of individuals, rather than being approached collectively. This can lead to burnout and a decline in individual performance.
8. Measuring Accessibility: After establishing a program, accessibility teams often struggle to develop key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to demonstrate progress, resulting in leadership deeming the program unsuccessful. Measuring the number of users with disabilities or the revenue generated from them can be difficult. Some organizations track success by counting accessibility bugs, but this is largely dependent on the volume of testing conducted. Leadership often requires data-driven evidence of progress, which can be challenging to obtain.
9. Cost of Program: Accessibility is frequently addressed as a series of bug fixes during the final stages of a project or after production, leading to a reactive approach. This break-and-fix cycle significantly increases the overall cost associated with implementing accessibility.

A digital accessibility program, like any other initiative, must be carefully designed using a multifaceted approach. It can be organized into three phases: crawl, walk, and run. During these phases, the focus should be on addressing low-hanging fruits and prioritizing high-impact tasks or applications while also preparing for a comprehensive future strategy. The program consists of several key components:

1. Auditing the products
2. Education and training
3. Coaching the teams
4. Accessibility Research
5. Creating resources to succeed
6. Winning allies
7. Addressing unconscious bias
8. Defining acceptance criteria
9. Measuring program performance

A digital accessibility program should have clearly defined objectives and scope. Once these elements are established, the organization can create an accessibility core or program team responsible for implementing the program and managing its various components.

It is also crucial to outline the role, responsibilities, and authority of the accessibility program. This program can collaborate with product teams, integrate with them, act as a supportive partner to enable their success, or take on a mixed approach.

By strategically combining these components, organizations can effectively address accessibility challenges and move towards improved accessibility. Let’s take a closer look at these components.

Auditing the Products

Before launching a digital accessibility program, it's crucial to assess the current state through an accessibility audit. This audit establishes a benchmark for the existing conditions, helps define goals, and identifies necessary resources, whether they are human or tools.

When conducting the audit, it is important to define the scope, plan the desired outcomes, and carefully select the resources. A combination of automated tools, such as Wave, Axe, Accessibility Insights, and the Infosys Accessibility Testing Tool, along with assistive technologies for manual accessibility testing—like screen readers (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver), magnification software, and keyboard emulation devices (like Switch Systems)—can be utilized to perform the audit. The results can be categorized by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) success criteria or by issue type, providing insights into both the nature and severity of the issues identified. According to Level Access, following are most common accessibility issues occurring in any software project:

1. Insufficient color contrast: Poor contrast between text or graphics and the background affects readability for users with low vision.
2. Lack of keyboard accessibility: Controls that cannot be operated using a keyboard alone create barriers for users who rely on keyboard-only navigation or keyboard emulators, such as Switch Systems. This also impacts screen reader users.
3. Lack of visible keyboard focus: The keyboard focus indicator helps users understand where their keyboard input is directed. When there is no visible keyboard focus, it creates challenges for sighted users who navigate with a keyboard.
4. Lack of image descriptions or alt text: Alternative text (alt text) is essential for users who cannot see images. The absence of alt text prevents non-sighted users from accessing the same information.
5. Improperly labeled controls: Incorrect or unclear labels can hinder the use of screen readers and voice control, making it difficult for some users to interact with controls effectively.

Education and Training

An organization can benefit greatly from training tailored to various job functions, including development, testing, design, writing, and leadership. Such training will raise awareness among stakeholders and develop the necessary skills to create accessible applications. Incorporating the latest standards, practices, and technologies in training will ensure that staff members stay updated on current trends.

In addition to technical training, building empathy is essential for enhancing awareness of the importance and impact of accessibility. Different strategies, such as meaningful interactions with people with disabilities, user sessions, and accessibility living labs, can help increase the organization’s empathy quotient. User sessions involve engaging with real users to understand their challenges and preferences.

Accessibility living labs, on the other hand, provide access to various assistive technologies and emulators, allowing employees to experience and understand the functioning of different tools and the challenges associated with various disabilities. These labs not only foster empathy but also support skill development in using these technologies within the workforce.

Infosys, for example, has established Accessibility Living Labs which feature a range of assistive tools, such as screen readers, magnifiers, switch devices, and sip-and-puff devices. The labs also include disability emulators that illustrate the potential challenges faced by individuals with specific disabilities while interacting with the digital world. Employees visit the lab to gain a deeper understanding of disabilities and accessibility, as well as to test and evaluate their prototypes using different devices and emulators.

Coaching of Teams

In addition to general training, it is crucial to provide one-on-one coaching and support to product teams for a deeper, case-specific understanding of their challenges. Designers, developers, and testers often encounter issues that can become valuable learning opportunities with assistance from members of the accessibility core team.

Accessibility coaching can also take place during project execution. For a successful implementation of accessibility in a product, it is essential that teams adhere to the following work principles:

1. Shift-Left: Digital accessibility greatly benefits from a shift-left approach that begins during project planning and design. By ensuring that designs and interactions are accessible from the outset, we can reduce the number of bugs and the costs associated with fixing them later. Developers can implement accessibility unit testing to identify and address issues early on, before the project is handed over to the testing team. According to Microsoft Digital, addressing a bug later in the post-production phase can cost 30 times more than it takes to fix it in the development phase.
2. Agile teams: The shift-left mindset is best achieved through agile teams, where each role fulfills its purpose. A research by Level Access found that teams can begin addressing 96% of WCAG success criteria before the development starts. Here is how each role can contribute to a product’s accessibility:
   1. Product/Project Manager: Although often overlooked, some processes and interactions cannot be made accessible if they were initially inaccessible. It is vital to consider accessibility during the high-level planning and design phases of any project or product to prevent future regrets. For managers, it is essential to research accessibility requirements, create personas that represent people with disabilities, and involve them in the research process. This ensures that the product roadmap accommodates diverse needs..
   2. UI/UX Designer: There are many accessibility considerations that can be addressed at the design stage, such as color contrast, straightforward interactions, error flows, focus indicators, and responsive layouts. It is essential for designers to collaborate closely with developers to create designs that are both technically feasible and accessible. Annotating designs with accessibility roles, labels, states, as well as outlining the necessary keyboard navigation and interaction flows can help identify and resolve many accessibility issues before they arise.
   3. UX Writer: Writers play a crucial role in ensuring content accessibility by keeping it simple, easily readable, and concise. They must work closely with designers to effectively communicate the intended message.
   4. Developers: Developers frequently bear the significant responsibility of implementing accessibility in products on their own, but it's crucial for teams to avoid falling into this trap. Providing developers with essential annotations can be very helpful. Additionally, developers should learn and apply best practices, participating in every phase of each project from planning onward. This involvement ensures that inaccessible interactions and designs are not handed off to them later in the process.
   5. QA Testers: Accessibility testing typically occurs in the later stages of a project. However, testers can engage earlier by creating test scenarios and cases focused on accessibility. They should also communicate the requirements to the rest of the team and help manage the influx of inaccessible artifacts.

Many projects often introduce accessibility only during the testing phase. However, it is crucial to understand that “a project concludes with accessibility testing, but it doesn’t start with it.” Accessibility, much like cybersecurity, is everyone’s responsibility. It is essential for all team members to work together towards the common goal of making the product more accessible.

For instance, Infosys Public Services assisted a major Canadian Crown Corporation with its digital accessibility program. This support included auditing, coaching, training, resource creation, research, and performance management, all of which significantly improved the corporation’s accessibility key performance indicators (KPIs).

Accessibility Research

Organizations need to research to remain informed about current trends, technologies, standards, and user preferences.

1. Researching trends and technologies: The accessibility core team should monitor changes in standards such as WCAG and WAI-ARIA and technological advancements, including AI and new assistive devices. This ongoing monitoring ensures that the accessibility program remains up-to-date and effective.
2. User research: To create a better experience, it is essential to listen to users’ needs and challenges. Recruiting users with disabilities for testing and incorporating their feedback contributes to developing more accessible and user-friendly applications.
3. User feedback: Although not a formal research technique, establishing a feedback loop is important for gathering valuable insights from end users. Offering multiple accessible methods for feedback enables users with disabilities to express their concerns, which should be actively addressed.

Creating Resources to Succeed

Product teams are the accessibility team's primary customers, so the team should cater to their needs. This will ensure that product teams have the resources to succeed and serve their customers effectively.

1. Accessible development resources: An accessible component library or design system helps ensure that developers utilize common components with predictable and accessible interactions. Utilizing tools for unit testing accessibility, such as WAVE and Axe, can help identify and resolve issues early in the development cycle.
2. Accessibility testing tools: Having the right automated accessibility testing tools are crucial for quickly catching issues. Manual testing with assistive technologies—such as screen readers, magnifiers, and switch systems—is essential for thorough testing, addressing both compliance with standards and usability. Although knowledge of these tools can be acquired through education and training, the accessibility team should identify and prioritize the tools that will be used for testing.
3. Knowledge hub: Comprehensive documentation and sharing of project best practices ensure that other teams can learn from them, enabling the organization to produce more accessible products. The accessibility team should document and maintain best practices in repositories such as Confluence or SharePoint to guarantee that relevant knowledge is accessible to all.

Winning Allies

The accessibility team serves as the core unit of the program, but it often needs support from additional allies to extend its reach. Members from various departments interested in accessibility understand the fundamentals and can discuss the topic in their specific areas or projects are referred to as Accessibility Champions. These champions play a crucial role in promoting and maintaining accessibility within the organization. It is also important to continuously help them develop their skills and keep them motivated by using gamification techniques, such as leaderboards, badges, rewards, and more.

Addressing Unconscious Bias

When establishing the objectives of an accessibility program, organizations often emphasize the accessibility of external, public-facing tools while neglecting the accessibility of internal, employee-facing tools. This oversight can prevent the creation of an equitable work environment for current employees with disabilities and those who may acquire permanent or temporary disabilities in the future. Therefore, it is crucial to prioritize internal accessibility and implement a thoughtful policy that addresses both internal and external tools.

1. Accessible procurement: Organizations should establish procurement policies that prioritize the inclusion of accessible technologies. This approach not only attracts employees with diverse abilities but also supports product teams in developing accessible products. Before finalizing procurement, products can be tested for accessibility, the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) can be reviewed, and accessibility-related clauses can be included in agreements. While it is crucial to procure accessible products, it is equally important to assess the product’s roadmap and determine the vendor’s commitment to addressing any accessibility issues and improving overall usability for all users.
2. Accessibility of internal tools: Ensuring that internal tools are accessible enables employees to work independently and confidently, ultimately reducing turnaround times. A more accessible workplace is widely recognized as enhancing employee satisfaction and retention.

Defining Acceptance Criteria

While there may be an urge to make a web application 100% WCAG compliant and usable for all disabilities, it is important to recognize the need to ship products to the market within a given timeframe. WCAG standards and usability with assistive technology can be subjective, with variations based on personal preferences and the growing number of assistive technologies. To add to the challenge, implementing practices to enhance usability with one assistive technology can sometimes hinder usability with another.

Thus, defining acceptance criteria for a project or product is crucial, noting anomalies for future enhancements. The project should incorporate these progressive enhancements over time. Not all insights will be gathered during the pre-production phase; some will emerge from post-production research and user feedback. Defining acceptance criteria helps conclude a project cycle and ship the product while continuously improving based on documented anomalies, research, and user feedback.

Pursuing perfection can be enticing, but it can also delay a project and increase costs, keeping the product from the market. The goal is to include accessibility in the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) by targeting maximum accessibility while setting a minimum measure for acceptable inaccessibility.

Measuring Program Performance

Now that the organization has established the program and is fulfilling its various components, it is essential to measure its performance effectively. A data-driven performance measure can help track the program effectively and make informed decisions.

As previously mentioned, one challenge is that it is difficult to measure the number of disabled users visiting a website or the revenue generated from them. This raises the question: How can we measure accessibility performance?

Some organizations rely on accessibility test results to gauge program performance. However, the issue with this approach is that most accessibility tests are designed to identify failures, often overlooking successful instances. This results in insufficient data for an accurate assessment. Other organizations measure accessibility based on the number of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) success criteria passed. The drawback here is that for large projects, a single failure in any success criterion can lead to an overall failure, which does not truly reflect the quality of the product. A quantified or weighted approach can also be beneficial, incorporating both failure and success instances into a metric.

Some organizations determine their accessibility metrics using user testing, focusing on the number of users with disabilities who are able to complete specific tasks on the product. Others opt to gather broader quality-based metrics from these users. Ultimately, organizations can choose their metrics based on their goals and current circumstances.

It is critical to continuously monitor and refine these metrics as the program evolves, often modifying or eliminating certain KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and transitioning to new performance metrics that can provide better insights for enhancing the program.

Launching an accessibility program is a significant step for any organization and requires adequate resources and alignment with the organization's goals. It is important to remember that accessibility is an ongoing effort, much like a continuous journey.

Author Details

Vaibhav Saraf, Accessibility SME and Quality Engineering Lead, Infosys Public Services

Vaibhav is a seasoned Accessibility Professional with extensive expertise in WCAG standards (2.0/2.1/2.2) and WAI-ARIA. With a strong programming background, he is adept at identifying and resolving accessibility challenges across various platforms. Vaibhav has a deep understanding of assistive technologies and has successfully led and delivered numerous projects focused on accessibility for both web and mobile applications (Android and iOS).

With over five years of experience complying with AODA, ADA, and Section 508, Vaibhav has effectively managed accessibility initiatives for a range of projects, including design systems, rebranding efforts, native mobile applications, web applications, enterprise solutions, and accessibility research. He is committed to ensuring that all deliverables are of the highest quality and adhere to accessibility standards.

Sakshi Sood, Quality Engineering Lead, Infosys Public Services

Sakshi is a Quality Assurance expert at Infosys Public Services, where she plays a vital role in ensuring the successful completion of technology programs for public sector agencies, aligning them with established objectives. She has a keen interest in accessibility and actively shares her insights about strategies organizations can implement to develop accessible and inclusive systems.