4. Creating Digital Accessibility Culture
Assessing an Organization’s Current Digital Accessibility Status
One of the the accessibility committee’s first tasks is to determine where the company is in terms of its compliance with accessibility guidelines and to identify gaps where improvements are needed. Since you do not have an accessibility expert on staff, you decide to look into firms that provide accessibility auditing services.
Choosing an Accessibility Auditor
Unless there is already an accessibility expert on staff, organizations likely want to hire a third-party auditor or find a person to hire on as one.
It is typically easier to find an auditing service than to find an accessibility expert to hire. Depending on the size of the company, and the amount of digital information it produces, you may or may not want to hire a permanent accessibility person.
Finding a reputable auditing service can also be a challenge. With the growing public awareness of accessibility issues, there are a growing number of so-called accessibility experts popping up, taking advantage of the market for these services that has emerged with this awareness. You want to evaluate these auditor services to ensure their reputability.
Factors you might take into consideration when selecting an accessibility service could include:
- The number of years the service has been in business (the longer the better)
- The clients they have served (potential references)
- The accessibility of the service’s website (dead giveaway to search elsewhere, if their site is not accessible)
- Whether their process aligns with accessibility auditing best practices (not required, but advisable)
- Whether they provide self-service tools (most good firms provide automated test tools)
- Whether accessibility auditing is their primary business (be wary of firms offering accessibility auditing as an add-on service for an unrelated primary business)
- Whether they offer training (the ability to train your staff is a good sign)
There are a number of reputable international services, so companies do not necessarily need to choose a local auditor. Since most accessibility regulations are based on WCAG, most international and local services audit based on those guidelines (or they should).
Self-Assessing
Automated Accessibility Checkers
There are quite a number of automated tools for testing web accessibility with varying degrees of coverage and accuracy. Much like choosing an accessibility auditor, choosing a good testing tool also requires a little critical evaluation. You may refer to existing evaluations of these tools and choose based on your needs. You may also want to adopt a number of accessibility checkers that complement each other.
Keep in mind that no automated accessibility checker can identify all potential barriers. In most cases, some human decision-making is required, particularly where meaning is being assessed. For example, does an image’s text alternative describe an image accurat