Accessibility policy? What is that?

At Exove, we have been working with accessibility for a long time. Accessibility is involved in almost every project we work on and is a very important topic for us. Despite this, our accessibility work has not been documented. We set out to change this by defining our internal accessibility practices into Exove’s accessibility policy.

What is accessibility policy all about?

To monitor and develop accessibility work throughout the company, clear practices and metrics are needed. This is where an accessibility policy document comes in.

Documentation does not need to be in any particular format, and there are no formal guidelines for such documentation. The idea is to record how accessibility is taken into account in the company and who is responsible for what. This document can also specify whether the activity is aiming to meet accessibility requirements at the WCAG 2.1 AA level, for example. Each company has its own needs, opportunities and objectives, so the document can be structured in any way you wish.

The most important thing is that the documentation is understandable. In other words, every employee must understand what the document says and what is expected of them.

Documentation of practices also helps to ensure that accessibility is adequately addressed at every stage of the company’s operations. For example, in the world of websites, accessibility must already be taken into account at the project definition stage. It must then be taken into account in the design, implementation and content production. Failure to address accessibility at any of these stages is likely to mean that accessibility objectives will not be met. Or that extra work is needed to achieve them.

It is important to keep the accessibility policy up to date

Once such a document is created, it is important to keep it up to date from then on. It is important to ensure that at least one person in the company is responsible for updating the documentation.

The policy document can include, for example, the company’s accessibility targets for the next year. Such an approach also makes it possible to monitor the objectives already through this document.

The document can be published for all to see as it will go some way towards demonstrating the company’s commitment to accessibility. But the document could just as well be made available only internally within the company. It is up to the company to decide.

The aim of the work

The main objective was to define a set of practices for us to monitor compliance and progress. Through monitoring, we also aim to be able to better target our internal training in areas where we are not yet as strong as we would like.

To ensure that each employee can play their part in making accessibility the best it can be, it is important to have a clear set of ground rules. In this way, work can be done cost-effectively and time is not wasted on unnecessary discussions about who does what.

Project work phases

The groundwork for the documentation was done in our accessibility guild. We wanted to involve experts from different departments from the start to ensure that the tools and processes were described in sufficient detail for each job. We also wanted to ensure that people in different roles had the opportunity to influence the content of the document.

Finally, the policy documentation was approved by the production steering group, in line with our company policy. And now the document is officially part of our operations.

Challenges

Honestly, the biggest challenge in the whole job seemed to be to do the documentation specifications with restraint. In our accessibility guild, we are very active in accessibility and we want the world to be ready immediately, but that is not realistic in the business world. With such an implementation, the challenge would be the challenge of monitoring alone. So, as the saying goes, moderation is the key. The purpose of this first phase of policy documentation is now to provide the rules for the work in the first phase. Once it is documented and monitored, more requirements will be added. When the work is done calmly and with constant monitoring, it is easier to expand both the required measures and the style of monitoring. 

It was also important to ensure that the practices were ones that everyone could follow without it feeling like an impossible task or too big a job. This required work on documenting the practices. Everyone’s role and the responsibilities of each role had to be described understandably and clearly.

The result

The result was a document describing our internal practices to ensure accessibility. This is a good starting point to build on to develop our company’s accessibility maturity to ever higher levels. And nothing motivates Exove’s accessibility experts more than improving accessibility!

If you need help defining your accessibility practices, get in touch! We have experts who will be happy to support you in this important work.

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