7 Steps to implement digital accessiblity for your products

 

The World Health Organization says that there are more than a billion people with different abilities. This means that organisations need to make sure that their products and services can be used by everyone, no matter what their abilities are. Here are seven things you can do to make your organisation more open to everyone.

 

 

 

Step 1: Train your product team

Make sure that all of your product teams understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is the first step in making your site more accessible (WCAG). The WCAG is a set of rules for making web content easier for people with different abilities to use. It’s important for everyone who makes content to know these rules so that all products and services can be used by everyone.

 

Step 2: Get budgets and support

To make accessibility work in an organisation, it’s important to have support from the top and enough money set aside to make products and services accessible. Without the support of the leaders, it will be hard to get the resources we need to make changes. Before you ask for money, make sure you explain why this is important and what benefits it will bring to your organisation.

 

Step 3: Assess your current state

Doing a thorough assessment of the current state of your organisation will help you figure out where changes need to be made to make it more accessible. Once you know where you need to make changes, you can start planning how to do so and make a plan for how to move forward.

Step 4: Put together a strike team

By putting together a strike team with people from every department in your organisation, you can make sure that everyone has a say in how to make your organisation more accessible. This team should get together often to talk about progress and deal with problems as they come up. This step also makes sure that everyone feels empowered and like they own the process of making their organisation more accessible.

Step 5: Make a plan and set deadlines

After conducting an assessment, putting together a strike team, and getting customer feedback through surveys or focus groups, it’s time to make a plan with timelines for each step to make your organisation more accessible. Setting clear deadlines helps keep everyone on track and gives measurable goals that can be used as benchmarks to check progress at regular intervals during the process.

Step 6: Gather Employee Support

For real organisational change to happen, employees at all levels, from the people who work directly with customers every day to the CEOs and COOs, need to be on board. By letting everyone in your organisation know about your plan to improve accessibility, everyone who helps with customer service or develops products will know what they need to do to make all points of contact with customers more inclusive.

Step 7: Continuously Improve

Getting feedback from customers can help an organisation figure out what changes need to be made to its current policies or processes so that accessibility stays in place after the initial implementation. Also, after putting in place an accessibility initiative, organisations can make sure they stay on top of customers’ changing needs and expectations by keeping track of their feedback on a regular basis.

 

Implementing accessibility initiatives helps make the world a place where everyone, regardless of thier ability , can use digital products or services. By teaching product teams about WCAG guidelines, getting leadership support, doing assessments, forming strike teams, figuring out roadmaps and timelines, getting customer feedback, and improving all the time, organisations can make sure that all users have the same experience.

How are you putting accessibility practises into place in your company? Let me know on what you think.