Planning and Managing Web Accessibility

Work on planning materials has moved to Planning.

This page captures previous work in this area.

References and related wiki pages

• Planning and Implementing Web Accessibility - the annotated navigation/overview page on the WAI website
• Planning and Managing Feedback - a place for comments (you can also put them inline or send them in e-mail)

Existing resources in scope

We are revising these resources. The WAI Resources section below has notes on each of these.

• Implementation Plan for Web Accessibility
• Start with Accessibility - Draft
• Improving the Accessibility of Your Website
• Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility

Resources in development

Updating existing resources

• Strategic Planning for Web Accessibility: Guidance for Developing a Plan for Your Organization or Project [status: ready for thoughtful review for draft posting]
  Comment via: Github issues list, wiki page, EOWG e-mail, or editors e-mail

• Improving the Accessibility of Your Website [status: ready for thoughtful review for draft posting]
  Comment via: Github issues list, wiki page, EOWG e-mail, or editors e-mail

• Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility [status: ready for thoughtful review for draft posting]
  Comment via: Github issues list, wiki page, EOWG e-mail, or editors e-mail

Developing new resources

• Outline: Implementation Plan
• Outline: Organizational Policies
• Outline: Improving Existing Sites

Illustrations

• Planning illustrations

New resources

• Dynamic guide for planning

Objective

To provide guidance on planning and managing web accessibility in a variety of different situations (eg. small websites vs large websites, technical expertise vs non-technical, managerial expertise vs non-managerial, in-house vs external capabilities, …).

Approach

1. Build content on existing WAI resources but make content more modular and more combinable;
2. Keep existing “entry points” (eg. want guidance on authoring tools only, not on managing accessibility);
3. Maintain current resources as stand-alone resources (not dependent on “interactive user interface”);
4. (future) Provide more “entry points” using combinations of the modules to address different situations;
5. (future) Develop interactive user interface based on existing “entry points” and module combinations;

Milestones

• Phase 1: Review and update the existing Implementation and planning resources (WAI-ACT Project).
• Phase 2: Develop a modular set of inter-related resources that together provide guidance on planning and managing web accessibility in different situations (WAI-ACT/WAI-DEV Project).
• Phase 3: Develop an interactive user interface to help people select the relevant modules on planning and managing web accessibility for their particular situation (WAI-DEV Project).

Target Audience

• Primary audience: (Technical) project managers, project team leaders, accessibility consultants.
• Secondary audience: Procurers, legal staff, higher-level decision makers.

Planning personas - These capture the key features of the identified primary audiences.

Possible Modules

Initial rough ideas for possible modules:

• Learn the Basic Principles - what is web accessibility, how people with disabilities use the Web, which Guidelines exist and what are they for (essential components), …
• Get Buy-In and Establish Responsibilities - business case, get buy-in from highest level possible, identify “champions” and “allies”, accessibility-responsibility breakdown, …
• Determine the Current Situation - initial cursory check to get an idea and fix basic issues, then comprehensive check to analyze situation and issues, …
• Develop Realistic Targets - understand your current situation (including tools and other infrastructure) versus your capabilities, establish phases with clear (achievable) targets, …
• Establish the Necessary Budget - get the budget necessary to achieve the planned target (iterative process), possibly chipping-in by different parts of the organization, …
• Develop Organizational Policy - set policies with clear references to the Guidelines and targets, reference people responsible (in-charge), consider making public commitments too, …
• Adopt Policy in Contracts and Practices - start putting the policy into practice for new product development and contracts, “enforce” it for new web content, applications (website extensions), and hiring, …
• Raise Awareness and Provide Training - carry out continual awareness raising throughout the organization, provide training for everyone involved (which is basically everyone :-) ), …
• Select Appropriate Tools - authoring tools (including content management systems, IDEs, information systems, …), evaluation tools, and others used throughout the process, …
• Embed Accessibility Throughout the Process - inception and planning (refer back to organizational policy), design stage, development, on-going maintenance and extension, content authoring, …
• Get Professional Help if Needed - determine your in-house capabilities and identify possible areas where you might need consulting, such as for: evaluation, development, training, …
• Involve Users with Disabilities - for awareness raising (managers, designers, developers, authors, …), and for specific anaylsis, …
• Monitor Progress and Follow-Up - on-going monitoring to identify specific issues (eg accessibility barriers), and analysis of higher-level causes (eg need more training, need policy enforcement, need external help, etc.), …

WAI Resources

The following WAI resources relate to planning and managing web accessibility. Where included notes on related resources should not be considered complete, comprehensive or expressing the consensus. They are there to capture thoughts and promote discussion.

Resource	Information included	Notes
Implementation Plan for Web Accessibility	Establish Responsibilities Conduct Initial Assessment Develop Organizational Policy Select Software Provide Training Develop Accessible Website Promote Organizational Awareness Monitor Website Accessibility	What do we mean when we talk about an 'implementation plan'? How could/should this dovetail with other implentation activities? Does the development methodolgy matter? That is, agile or waterfall Not clear what the goal of the communication plan is Structuring team responsible parties Little about how to do many of the activities mentioned e.g. how does one access expertise of a web developer? Something around what teams/topics need to be considered when reviewing capability Consider how procurement can have an impact; how can it be structured to require accessibility considerations, how to check the deliverables, what happens if they fall short? Estimating resources is quite a challenge... any rules of thumb? What activities might be considered as part of the project to build in better accessibility e.g. review of designs, spot audits, unit test development, change to QA process, involving users
[Planned] Start with Accessibility (was Eval in process)	Project Initiation Stage Planning Stage Design Stage Development Stage Project Closure Post Project	...
Improving the Accessibility of Your Website	Getting Started Evaluating to Identify the Issues Optimizing Your Retrofitting Prioritizing the Repairs Next: Strategic Planning	The content could be broken up to make it easier to read Clearer action points for readers - highly dependent on type of organization and project There is a bit of overlap with the Developing Organizational Policies document There is likely to be a need for connection with the business case information Need to speak to using prioritization to set achievable targets. Is a target of all 'A' criteria in this case provide a usable goal? Consider how Release Schedules could be used to improve accessibility - adding on accessibility fixes as part of an ongoing maintenance activity is likely to be more achieveable for some projects. Using prioritization to identify quick win items It is not clear who this is targeted at, some speaks to large organizations, some medium. There is a need for a bit more for smaller organizations.
Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility	Reference guidelines clearly Specify conformance level Define scope of website(s) Set milestones Define monitoring, conformance claims, and follow-up process Provide for integration and updating of policy	Covers conformance statements more than a broader organizational policy Policy could include issues such as internal communications, project structures, procurement, how users having difficulty are supported Consideration for multinational companies and differing national legislative frameworks

Resource usage

There is discussion on the possibility of merging the Planning and Improving pages as there is significant overlap between the activities involved. Whilst not an accurate science, the following links to reports (generated in ahrefs.com) that provide an indication of the number of referring pages for the two main resources:

Backlinks report	Estimated backlinks
Main planning page ahrefs report	56
Implementation Plan ahrefs report	34
Improving the Accessibility ahrefs report	34

Other related resources

• Involving Users in Web Projects for Better, Easier Accessibility
• Selecting and Using Authoring Tools for Web Accessibility
• Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools