Successfully Integrating Accessibility in your Organization's Web Development Lifecycle

CSUN 2011

March 17th, 2011
San Diego

Intellectual Property

Under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada (BY-NC-SA 2.5) Creative Commons license.

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PermaLink
http://www.accessibiliteweb.com/presentations/2011/csun/a11y-lifecycle/

Speaker

Denis Boudreau

• 13 years of experience as a web developer
• 10 years of experience as an accessibility expert
• President, AccessibilitéWeb Cooperative
• Co-editor, Quebec Web Accessibility Standards (SGQRI 008)
• Participant, W3C HTML5 Accessibility Task Force

And yeah...
English is only a second language to me, so please bear with me!

Coming from up north (Quebec, Canada)...

Where the weather is a little different!

So believe me when I say...

I'm real happy to be here!

a11y is an important issue in Canada

Building on top of W3C standards

Now, having said that...

Accessibility: still, not quite there yet!

How can we change things, when...

• Users don't complain enough about lack of accessibility

• Organizations don't demand accessible websites
• Providers either don't care or don't know where to start

Planning Web Accessibility?

A totally hypothetical situation!

• Imagine a department or agency
• Planning to develop a "web portal"
• Based on "the best" platform
• Expecting to deliver by 2014
• Following "current" requirements
• Addressing "strategic" issues

How does one "plan" accessibility?

Pick just about any web project you've worked on...

Project Management

• Analysis
• Architecture
• Interaction Design
• Content Strategy
• Graphic Design
• Prototyping
• Development
• Quality Control

When the project reaches the final stages of quality control, accessibility experts are called in and assessments are provided.

Enter the Accessibility Expert

The accessibility expert is called at the very end of the project to measure and (most probably) fix the accessibility of:

• contents that wasn't meant to be,
• based on incompatible technologies,
• against organisational "status quo",
• with stakeholders on the defensive,
• according to impossible deadlines,
• with limited (or nonexistent) budgets.

Not an easy fight!

And we really wonder why there are so few good examples of accessible websites?

Think about it!
Dealing with accessibility at the end of the production chain leads to costly rework, without adequate means to do so, for problems that should have been dealt with early on.

So, what must we do...

• to reach standards compliancy?
• to improve access to content?
• to come out of this in one piece?

A question of governance

Help the organization identify, prevent and avoid common pitfalls:

• Transversal aspect of accessibility
• a11y as a final step in the process
• Rely on a single a11y champion
• Only care about the technical criteria
• Accessibility versus Compliance
• Tools that do all the work for us
• Impact of technological platforms

Resource:
Planning accessibility - Accessibility responsibility breakdown

Going back to our development lifecycle...

Spreading out accessibility requirements over the production chain

Project Management

Accessibility

• Analysis
• Architecture
• Interaction Design
• Content Strategy
• Graphic Design
• Prototyping
• Development
• Quality Control

Planning the right intervention, at the right time, by the right people, in order to prevent errors & expensive omissions.

Summing It Up...

All about teamwork & workflow

• Collective ownership of accessibility
• Really learning to work together
• Spreading responsibilities evenly
  • Involvement from the whole team
  • Breakdown based on roles

Prevent rather than cure

It's a lot cheaper to get it right the first time

• Planning accessibility properly brings:
  • More efficient use of time
  • Reductions in cost
  • Gains in production
  • Gains in customer relations
  • Gains in internal relations

Integrate accessibility as part of the organization's culture
(so expertise remains, when experts leave)

So, how do we achieve this?

Incorporate accessibility at all stages

• Planning accessibility from the very early stages
• Planning sufficient and consistent support
• Iterative rounds of accessibility audits
  • From initial wireframes to final HTML templates
  • Recommendation reports
• Ensure autonomy through knowledge transfer

Resources (if you can read french!)
Guide de partage des responsabilités et des tâches relatives à l'accessibilité d’un site Web
http://www.msg.gouv.qc.ca/documents/standards/guide_partage_responsabilites.pdf (PDF, 325Ko)

Accessibility Costs & Impacts

Do more with the same budget?

• In the hands of qualified suppliers
  • 2-5% of the production budget
  • Expect greater costs at the beginning
  • Opportunity and means to get better
• Qualify as "the best" provider for the job

Accessibility Responsibility Breakdown

Part of the "Web Experience Toolkit" project (WET).

Alternate version of the breakdown (PDF, 190Ko) provided by Accessibil-IT (Ontario, Canada).

Questions, comments?