Getting a product accessible is not enough
TL;DR
It’s not enough to get a product accessible.
The entire product experience should be accessible.
The processes needed to attain product experience accessibility must be consistently repeatable.
To accomplish continued accessibility, organizations need to implement processes and systems that can objectively measure whether the correct steps have been taken to retain product experience accessibility over time. The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model (AMM) includes employee-facing communications, training, documentation, and tools.
What is a Maturity Model in General?
Maturity models have been around since the 80s. They generally contain several levels with increasing levels of maturity. Each level contains a definition, controls, a list of processes, and proof points that can be produced by an organization to legitimately claim that they are at a particular level of maturity.
This proposed W3C Accessibility Maturity Model describes an overall framework for establishing a robust, repeatable ICT accessibility program and identifying areas for organizational improvement. The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model is a tool that:
helps people, groups, or organizations assess their accessibility practices
identifies gaps between the current capabilities and the next level of accessibility maturity
encourages improving overall accessibility performance over time
What is the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model?
The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model is a guide for organizations to evaluate and improve their business processes to produce digital products accessible to people with disabilities. Using the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model provides organizations with informative guidance on improving accessibility policies, processes, and outcomes. W3C defines “informative guidance” as guidance that is not normative and does not set requirements.
The W3C Accessibility Maturity Model was designed to work for any size of organization, from small to large corporations or government agencies. Additionally, it is intended to be completely independent of the requirements outlined in relevant technical accessibility standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Why do organizations need an Accessibility Maturity Model?
Incorporating Information and Communications Technology (ICT) accessibility into an organization’s workflow and quality governance can be complex. While some organizations have individuals or departments that support accessibility, many do not recognize the importance of ICT accessibility as a requirement or the need for accessibility governance systems to support the organization’s accessibility efforts. The missing governance and systems can limit these organizations’ ability to produce accessible products and services and their associated training and documentation on an ongoing basis.
No single department is responsible for organizational accessibility.
It takes a collaborative, coordinated effort from numerous departments to establish and implement accessibility governance systems throughout an organization.
These systems integrate ICT accessibility criteria into policies, critical business processes, organizational culture, and management structures in a consistent, repeatable, and measurable fashion. Only then can organizations address the complexities related to enabling ICT accessibility on an ongoing basis.
How does the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model Work?
Currently, the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model is a narrative and supporting spreadsheet. The spreadsheet asks you to rate how well you accomplish the proof points for a given dimension and provides definitions for those ratings. If a proof point does not apply to your organization (for example, the question includes a reference to GDPR, but you have no European customers), you can mark that proof point as not applicable. A running total is maintained at the top of the spreadsheet. Eventually, when the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model narrative is finalized, it is hoped that a generic HTML version of this tool can be developed with save states.
But we do VPATs? Why isn’t that enough?
Accessibility Conformance Reports / Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (ACR/VPATs) look at a snapshot of a single version of a product frozen at a point in time. There are no guarantees about the accessibility of that product later in the product release timeline because ACR/VPATs don’t assess whether the product accessibility that was documented can be repeated.
Organizations know when they are doing well (or poorly) with product accessibility using audit reports and bug counts. However, these metrics don’t indicate how or if the organization can continue to produce accessible products. Examining key corporate processes is critical to making this determination, and ACR/VPATs, audits, and defects don’t do that. Implemeting the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model is a big part of a “shift-left” methodology of preventing problems from recurring, not fixing them after they have happened.
We do accessibility audits too?
Accessibility maturity modeling is very different than accessibility conformance testing.
Conformance testing provides information about the level of accessibility conformance of a particular product. Conformance test results provide a picture of a particular version of a product (or a subcomponent of a product).
Maturity modeling provides information about an organization’s ability to produce accessible products over the long term. The results of a maturity modeling assessment provide a holistic picture of an organization’s accessibility initiatives — where the organization is doing accessibility well and where improvements can be made to remove barriers.
I have ideas; how can I contribute?
We encourage people and organizations who could benefit from implementing the W3C Accessibility Maturity Model to review the FPWD (First Public Working Draft) and send comments back to the organizers. Instructions for providing feedback are on the W3C website inside the Accessibility Maturity Model FPWD.