There are many big organizations that struggle with accessibility and it’s not for a lack of resources. Actually, too many resources can get in the way. And so on the screen with me, I have a document where I have bullet points on the struggles that many big companies have with website accessibility. Or it could be digital accessibility more broadly. But I’m going to go over these struggles and then I’m going to have some recommendations to help combat these struggles.
So first, one problem is there are too many approvals needed or too much collaborations needed. So you might have all of these different departments and you have approvals needed and approvals might be needed at different levels. That is going to create a problem with accessibility and you’re going to slow down the progress. So I’ll address that in the recommendation section below.
Another struggle is there are too many projects going on at once. You might have an accessibility project, you might have a project where you’re working on something else on the digital asset, or just something else entirely, and there are too many things that are going on simultaneously. So with accessibility, you are going to need to focus in on accessibility, and I’ll have more on that in a second.
You might be working on too many digital assets at once, so you might be working on a mobile app, one website, another website, and that’s already too many digital assets to be working on at once, so you want to focus in on one digital asset at a time. That’s not because we don’t want to make all of the digital assets accessible, it’s because we can only do so much. Even with a tremendous amount of resources, it usually becomes too much to work on the accessibility of multiple digital assets.
You also may have too many people working at once. This can become problematic because as much as we want to make this happen as soon as possible, if we have, let’s say, ten people working on accessibility, it can create confusion and it can create problems on who’s working on what and what is the proper approach and tracking the completion of the projects. So too many people can actually work to your detriment.
And similarly remediation on too many issues is attempted. So if you’re trying to remediate, let’s say, the content, let’s say your images and your videos, and you’re also trying to remediate all of the interactive elements on your website, you’re doing too many things at once. You want to finish something and then move on to the next issue.
Another struggle is there’s no clear delegation or responsibilities. This may be something where a department takes it on and the department generally works on it, but nobody’s exactly sure who is working on what and who is responsible for its completion. That can create problems.
Also no prioritization, so there should be a prioritization in which accessibility issues you take care of first and this is big because I have seen even the largest of companies, they’ve been sued multiple times and it really starts to frustrate them because they’re working on accessibility and yet they’re getting sued once and then again. So it’s usually because they start with accessibility because they’ve been sued and then they get sued again while they’re working on accessibility. And then they find out that this may continue on and on until they finish. And it’s in part because there is no prioritization. So prioritizing accessibility issues is extremely important in reducing risk of litigation.
And my ADA compliance course has the accessibility issues already prioritized. It also provides strategy on how to prioritize custom specific to your website and your situation. So continuing on with the struggles, there are no clear timelines, so this has to get done. We can’t just let this be an ongoing project. Because accessibility, if you let it, it can last for years, for literally years. And that is because of course, there are always updates or new content that we could potentially have, but we need to have a clear timeline. And I said accessibility, it’s not because of accessibility. Accessibility, yes, we need to constantly work on accessibility, but if there are no clear timelines, a project can just have a way of meandering and stalling out and not completing. So we need to have a firm deadline that we need to get this done. It needs to have a sense of urgency to it.
There are many big organizations that struggle with accessibility and it’s not for a lack of resources. Actually, too many resources can get in the way. And so on the screen with me, I have a document where I have bullet points on the struggles that many big companies have with website accessibility. Or it could be digital accessibility more broadly. But I’m going to go over these struggles and then I’m going to have some recommendations to help combat these struggles.
So first, one problem is there are too many approvals needed or too much collaborations needed. So you might have all of these different departments and you have approvals needed and approvals might be needed at different levels. That is going to create a problem with accessibility and you’re going to slow down the progress. So I’ll address that in the recommendation section below.
Another struggle is there are too many projects going on at once. You might have an accessibility project, you might have a project where you’re working on something else on the digital asset, or just something else entirely, and there are too many things that are going on simultaneously. So with accessibility, you are going to need to focus in on accessibility, and I’ll have more on that in a second.
You might be working on too many digital assets at once, so you might be working on a mobile app, one website, another website, and that’s already too many digital assets to be working on at once, so you want to focus in on one digital asset at a time. That’s not because we don’t want to make all of the digital assets accessible, it’s because we can only do so much. Even with a tremendous amount of resources, it usually becomes too much to work on the accessibility of multiple digital assets.
You also may have too many people working at once. This can become problematic because as much as we want to make this happen as soon as possible, if we have, let’s say, ten people working on accessibility, it can create confusion and it can create problems on who’s working on what and what is the proper approach and tracking the completion of the projects. So too many people can actually work to your detriment.
And similarly remediation on too many issues is attempted. So if you’re trying to remediate, let’s say, the content, let’s say your images and your videos, and you’re also trying to remediate all of the interactive elements on your website, you’re doing too many things at once. You want to finish something and then move on to the next issue.
Another struggle is there’s no clear delegation or responsibilities. This may be something where a department takes it on and the department generally works on it, but nobody’s exactly sure who is working on what and who is responsible for its completion. That can create problems.
Also no prioritization, so there should be a prioritization in which accessibility issues you take care of first and this is big because I have seen even the largest of companies, they’ve been sued multiple times and it really starts to frustrate them because they’re working on accessibility and yet they’re getting sued once and then again. So it’s usually because they start with accessibility because they’ve been sued and then they get sued again while they’re working on accessibility. And then they find out that this may continue on and on until they finish. And it’s in part because there is no prioritization. So prioritizing accessibility issues is extremely important in reducing risk of litigation.
And my ADA compliance course has the accessibility issues already prioritized. It also provides strategy on how to prioritize custom specific to your website and your situation. So continuing on with the struggles, there are no clear timelines, so this has to get done. We can’t just let this be an ongoing project. Because accessibility, if you let it, it can last for years, for literally years. And that is because of course, there are always updates or new content that we could potentially have, but we need to have a clear timeline. And I said accessibility, it’s not because of accessibility. Accessibility, yes, we need to constantly work on accessibility, but if there are no clear timelines, a project can just have a way of meandering and stalling out and not completing. So we need to have a firm deadline that we need to get this done. It needs to have a sense of urgency to it.
We cannot get caught in this area where it’s just unsure what everyone is doing, where they’re going, why they’re halted while they’re paused on something. We don’t want to have any of those situations where work has stopped because for another reason and nothing is continuing on.
We need to take a regimented approach to this and move forward day by day. There should be significant progress day by day, because if you do that, if you have the resources to have three to four people working on accessibility, then for a single website, this can be a week long project. It just depends on how much content you have, right? Content will slow you down because accessibility for content can involve a lot of manual work.
But that’s something where if someone is working on, let’s say, alternative text, they can recruit a subset of people to help them with alternative text. But this should not take months. This at most should take three weeks if you’re on a single website. So keep that in mind and make sure that there is significant progress each and every day.
And then also for the duration of the Accessibility project, you want to freeze updates to website or content for one to three weeks, as long as you can freeze it for so that progress can be made and that the foundation of accessibility can be implemented before we start to change different elements, to change different content, to add content to that. And then what we also want to do, what is not on this document is you want to invest in accessibility so that your team is more familiar.
So anybody that is changing code, anybody that is editing code, anybody that is changing content, updating content, adding content, et cetera. Any of the personnel, the digital personnel that are responsible for making updates or adding content you want to make sure that they are familiar with accessibility and that they start to learn accessibility and eventually that they become their own mini accessibility expert, at the very least for what they are responsible for.
And if you do that, then we won’t have to have this larger endeavor. Each time for accessibility, it will become easier and smaller and the cost will decrease because we will not be going back and changing what we’ve already done. Rather, we will only be making small changes and each time they will be reduced until we get to a point where accessibility is just a seamless part of our process and it comes through finalized with a perfectly accessible experience, digital experience, no matter what digital asset you’re on.
So those are many of the struggles, and those are my recommendations for those struggles. My ADA Compliance Course can help an organization of any size. If you are a larger enterprise, it will help your accessibility Coordinator understand the accessibility issues that are most commonly litigated by the most active plaintiffs law firms, and then your coordinator can prioritize based on those accessibility issues.
I also have a WCAD Course where your team can understand the different accessibility principles, but also all of the success criteria in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. And these technical standards are the source for Web and digital accessibility. So if you invest in training and your team understands the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the success criteria that comprise the guidelines, you are going to be much, much better off and save significant time and energy down the line versus needing to outsource accessibility every time the need arises, right?
So this way, if there are accessibility issues, your team can resolve those in house because they are familiar with them and they can understand them. But I highly recommend the ADA compliance course and the WCAG course, and I will link to them below. Any enterprises will be much better off for having gone through that training.
