Meeting minutes
<fbedora> +present
Fazio: I am David and am the co-chair of this TF with the APA
… Why we started this group.
… WCAG 3, dashboards being worked on, no 1 and done. a11y in / out. we want a a11y maturity model
… we wanted an agnostic model.
… maturity model is to provide quality assurance
… companies come for guidance, we reviewed multiple maturity models from around the world.
… shows our Maturity Model Specification
… added an introduction, and # of use cases
<kakinney> https://
Fazio: created a TLDR document on the lowdown why / how / what is our maturity model.
… new update revisted our dimensions now 7 dimensions. Communications, Knowledge and Skills, support, ICT dev life cycle , personnel, procurrement and culture
… you can follow all WCAG requirements but you may not be fully accessible especially within your own company.
… from secretaries all the way up the chain to top management, hiring practices, and skilling up everyone, understanding a11y and promoting.
<shawn> @@: @@ issue
Janina: reason why in w3c context, in my opinion, an orgaization, from customer facing, internal facing, you fill out a web form, where ever you turn the web is involved. but maturity model gives us a way to track over time and you can catch regressions, and track your a11y accessibility. AGWAG we leveraged their documents.
David: you need clear instructions and feedback on where you are and where you are going. By implementing a maturity model you can track you companies accessibility maturity. There are other organizations doing it but not as robust. there are other companies doing these types of maturity models.
Joice: what components of the dimentions are different than other models?
Joyce: what components of the dimensions are ddifferent from other popular models?
Fazio: We are interested in discovering gaps
Spreadsheet of model can be found at: https://
Fazio: in the USA the ADA has a clause that 'barriers must be removed as they become readily achievable'
… the maturity model can help companies do that
Fazio: EU is requiring organizations to 'demonstrate' their conformance mechanisms
Joyce: Coming out of W3C rather than an accessibility organization, it makes it more mainstream work and not charity work
Lionel_Wolberger: An aspect that is challenging, the great success of WCAG, REF by law, section 508, ADA etc. EU laws point to 2.1. WCAG is a binary and unforgiving list of guideline. and ref by law now you are violating a law.
… we need a way forward, org x doing a maturity model, we need to think about a solution for this.
Lionel_Wolberger: Maturity Model might benefit from a implementation guideline, how to do maturity model and avoid the pitfall that I was referring to
Fazio: we need feedback what is missing what do you like, what can be improved.
<Zakim> Marcelo-Paiva, you wanted to ask if the maturity model is for the entire organization or if it also aims to measure the accessibility maturity level of teams ie: product, engineering, ux, qa, etc
Marcelo-Paiva: Is it only organization level measuring, or can we measure teams level
Fazio: There was discussion of incorporating this W3C MM into WCAG 3.0
Fazio: ... this model is extensible. Dimensions can be added on.
+1 that Wendy shows it being used in the workplace
wendyreid: Using this at our workplace, it helps to guage effort
… having an assessment method sometimes helps guage current work against our own opinion
… In response to Lionel
… to Lionel's comment, there are many other countries
… AODA for example supports this type of reporting
<Wilco> +1 Wendy, EU requires statements for many orgs too
wendyreid: if we openly disclose shortcomings, it helps communicate and give expectations to users
<alastairc> +1 to Wendy, we've written many public sector accessibility accessibility statements of 'partial conformance', and there's been no wave of law suits
wendyreid: even in the USA it's likely better to be honest than to say broader sunny statements
Amanda_: UK govt organizations, fully or partially funded by the govt, must indicate where they are working
… I agree with Lionel there is a risk and a lot of ambulance chasing
… it's important to include deficits if possible
… UK is a great template: here is a list of errors, and we intend to fix this all by ___
Fazio: The spreadsheet is experimental right now
<Zakim> CharlesL, you wanted to answer Marcel's question
Fazio: and we would like to create a web form like the W3C accessibility statement generator to facilitate self-reporting
CharlesL: Marcelo's question, can it work on an department level?
… I applied it to my company
… we made an OKR for accessibility maturity this year
… I ask each dept to either self-report, or I guide them through it
wendyreid: OKR is objective key results
<Zakim> alastairc, you wanted to comment on WCAG as 'measuring stick', and when you need to get into processes / maturity and to also mention first mover disadvantage
Lionel_Wolberger: a method to give leaders and teams goals that overall and together roll up to corporate targets
alastairc: Revealing shortfalls can be a risk, if you are alons in it; when everyone does it, that risk will be highly minimized
… where laws have used WCAG (although not sure about Section 508) at the regulation level, there is some measure of reasonableness
… that tends to blunt the binary-ness of WCAG
… Measuring whether something is accessible is a different problem from measuring whether organizations have policies and processes that support accessibility, so different documents would be better
kevin: in my role at a governmental level, i was acutely aware of the failure to deliver accessible experiences
… a good MM fosters an inclusive environment
… that is conducive to producing accessible experiences
… i used a number of them, and none worked very well IMHO
… one issue is the range of departments and departmental activities. Facing a large org of 15K people, I could not roll up the aggregate behavior to a metric
… I suspect this will not work as well, though I am open minded
kevin: In my role as a W3C member, I think there the lack of explicitness and 'rigitiy' makes this different from WCAG. This makes it less useful from a policy or regulation perspective.
… I am not yet behiind this to the level of, 'this one fixes everything'
Fazio: Please join the group to bring these perspectives to our work
… It is extensible, and that answers some of your objections
… Having one dept following the model is already a win
… its intention is to influence organizations to develop a 'spoke and wheel' pattern, with a unit responsible for accessible radiating the proper policies and methods
kevin: That spoke-and-whell doesn't work for some organizations
… having that as a desired end point may not be appropriate for all
… organizations vary so widely, and many do not follow the approach advocated or implicit in this model
… and they do succeed
+1 to Kevin, on how different all orgs are
IMHO the model should indicate that
no one road to success
Fazio: This is great feedback, and we want your help
<Zakim> shawn, you wanted to ask "legislate around this"?
shawn: Did I hear you say that there may be legislature around this?
Fazio: Governments and agencies look to W3C for guidelines
… they will look to our W3C products to do that
… will it happen for sure? no. are we pushing for it? no.
<Zakim> shawn, you wanted to react to shawn
Fazio: but we remain cognizant of this possible outcome, and are aware of consequences
janina: and potential dangers
shawn: That raises potential W3C concerns
kakinney: Feedback on the document itslef
<Lionel_Wolberger> s/islef/itself
kakinney: I would like more use cases, and the titles should convey the type of organization referenced in the use case
Implementing Maturity Model at Benetech
CharlesL: I went to departments and presented this spreadsheet
… some departments like engineering took it to fill it out on their own
… other departments wanted guidance
… a set of meetings was set
… first meeting, 2 hours, to read the support tab
… a 90 min meeting to read two more dimensions
… final meeting, 1 hour, read the remainder
… findings in the customer support team, a number of the dimensions were not applicable
… the ICT cycle was not applicable
… the procurement was not applicable
… (Charles is screen sharing, and the recording will be available, so we will more lightly minute the rest of the presentation)
CharlesL: The time to implement is important. Are there too many proof points?
… the task of 'bubbling it up' to the top level, i haven't tackled that yet
… (to Kevin's point)
amanda: how do you deal with the 'n/a' non-applicable items
CharlesL: it was n/a at their departmental level. The organization overall needs to deal with this, somewhere, but it's not this department
… encourage them to be verbose in the comments
kakinney: Who do you go to, what lies with who, that will help with the marketing of this maturity model