Building a Culture of Inclusion

While laws can require accessibility, lasting change requires embedding accessibility into every part of your organization. In this chapter, we'll explore practical strategies for making your organization truly accessible. Not just checking compliance boxes, but creating a culture where accessibility is second nature.

The European Approach: ICT4IAL Guidelines

The W3C’s implementation guide is designed to work globally, offering a universal framework for building accessibility into organizations. Individual regions and countries can then adapt that framework to their own contexts. The EU’s ICT4IAL (ICT for Information Accessibility Learning) guidelines are a great example, offering 7 specific recommendations for implementing accessible information practices within organizations. We’ll review these in more detail below.

The Seven Recommendations

1. Strategic Commitment
Include an accessibility statement in your organization's long-term strategy. This signals that accessibility isn't a side project; it's core to who you are.

2. Implementation Plan
Develop a concrete strategy to implement accessible information across your organization.

3. Assign ResponsibilityDesignate someone to lead accessibility implementation and provide them with the resources needed to succeed. Accessibility requires clear ownership and oversight to be successful.

4. Incremental Implementation
Be ambitious in your vision but modest in your initial steps. Don't try to fix everything overnight. Set realistic milestones and build momentum.

5. Process Integration
Embed accessibility into your information production and dissemination processes. Make it a key part of the workflow, not an afterthought.

6. Education and Training
Provide accessibility information, education, and training for all staff. From executives and developers to customer service representatives, everyone should have at least a basic understanding of accessibility.

7. Vendor Management
When outsourcing information production, ensure accessibility requirements are clearly stated in contracts and subject to quality checks.

Once you've implemented these recommendations, use the ICT4IAL assessment tools to evaluate your progress and identify areas for improvement.

Measuring Progress: Accessibility Maturity Models

How can you tell if your accessibility efforts are truly working? How do you effectively measure growth?

The Accessibility Maturity Model (AMM) provides a clear framework for that.

What is an Accessibility Maturity Model?

An AMM is a structured framework organizations can use to measure how well they integrate accessibility across their operations. The model lets you:

• Create a company-wide accessibility snapshot.

• Evaluate current accessibility practices

• Identify gaps..

• Plan for continuous improvement.

• Track progress over time.

• Document improvements.

Think of an AMM as both your diagnostic tool and your roadmap.

The Seven Dimensions of Accessibility Maturity

A typical AMM assesses your organization across multiple dimensions, including:

Communications
How accessible are your internal and external communications?

1. Knowledge and Skills
   Are your teams trained in accessibility? Are processes in place for continued learning?

2. Support
   What support and reasonable accommodations do you provide for employees and customers with disabilities?

3. ICT Development Lifecycle
   How is accessibility integrated into the design and development of your digital assets?

4. Personnel
   Do your job descriptions, recruiting processes, and onboarding procedures reflect accessibility values?

5. Procurement
   How do you assess the accessibility of products you purchase?

6. Culture
   What are your organization's attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors around accessibility?

Four Stages of Maturity

For each accessibility maturity dimension, organizations typically progress through four stages:

Stage 1: Inactive
No awareness of the organizational need for accessibility, which is where many organizations start.

Stage 2: Launch
The need is recognized. Planning has begun, but efforts aren't well-coordinated or organized yet.

Stage 3: Integrate
A strategic plan is in place, and the approach is well-defined, organized, and actively implemented.

Stage 4: Optimize
Accessibility best practices are fully implemented with continuous evaluation and action to meet desired outcomes. This is the goal.

Making It Real: Proof Points

Every stage above needs concrete "proof points", specific, measurable evidence that you've reached that level of maturity. For example:

• Launch stage proof point: "Accessibility training has been provided to 25% of the web development team."

• Integrate stage proof point: "All new website features undergo accessibility testing before deployment."

• Optimize stage proof point: "Quarterly accessibility audits conducted with findings integrated into development roadmap."

Recruiting People with Disabilities

An accessible organization doesn't stop at accessible products; it also provides an accessible environment for employees. Here's how to make that happen:

Making Your Hiring Process Accessible

Before Posting:

• Include your disability inclusion statement in job postings.

• Post openings on disability-focused job boards.

• Ensure your careers website is fully accessible.

During Recruitment:

• Attend disability-focused job fairs.

• Ensure interview facilities are accessible.

• Provide reasonable accommodations, including assistive technologies.

• Train hiring managers on best practices for interviewing candidates with disabilities.

What You're Really Hiring For: When recruiting for accessibility roles specifically, define the skills you need. This can include:

• Design skills: Standards-based interaction design, usability principles, etc.

• Development skills: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, ARIA, frameworks, and libraries.

• Testing skills: Evaluation tools, keyboard testing, and screen reader proficiency.

• User research skills: Facilitating testing with disabled users.

• Documentation skills: Creating and remediating accessible documents and presentations.

• Standards knowledge: WCAG 2.2, ARIA, PDF/UA.

Communications: Reaching Everyone

Your marketing and communications materials should be accessible to everyone, no exceptions. Use these practical steps to make your communications accessible across every channel and audience.

Best Practices for Accessible Communications

Establish Standards

• Publish accessibility standards for all communications.

• Train communicators on people-first language and clear, plain language.

Implement Across Media

• Ensure all published documents are accessible.

• Make websites and all media types accessible.

• Caption and describe all videos.

• Understand how people use assistive technologies.

Legal and Public Relations

Accessibility has legal implications, but it also creates positive PR opportunities. To protect your organization and leverage accessibility as a brand advantage, follow these legal best practices

Legal Recommendations

• Know the Law
  Identify and understand relevant international, regional, national, and local laws and standards.

• Assess Your Risk
  Understand your organization's legal liability regarding accessibility.

• Document Your Plan
  Create and follow an ICT accessibility plan, and document how your products and services meet accessibility standards.

• Positive Positioning
  Use accessibility as a differentiator. Leading on accessibility can strengthen your brand and build customer trust.

The Testing Foundation: Evaluate Early and Often

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is leaving accessibility testing until the end of a project. By then, fixing problems is expensive and time-consuming.

The W3C recommends a "shift left" approach, design with accessibility in mind and test early in the development process. Below are key W3C recommendations to support this.

Six Suggestions for Effective Evaluation

1. Design for Usability
Ensure your product is fit for purpose and designed for people with disabilities from the start. Embrace a "born accessible" approach.

2. Create Reusable Resources
Build design and code libraries that help developers consistently create accessible products.

3. Use Quality Assurance Tools
Employ accessibility evaluation tools, but remember: automated tools can only catch about 30-40% of accessibility issues. Human evaluation is critical.

4. Test Throughout the Lifecycle
Conduct formative testing (during development), summative testing (before launch), and continuous testing (as content updates).

5. Include People with Disabilities
No evaluation is complete without testing by actual users with disabilities. Their lived experience catches issues that automated tools and even expert reviewers might miss.

6. Build Expertise
If you lack in-house expertise, use outside consultants, but work toward building that expertise internally. Accessibility shouldn't be something you always outsource.

Procurement: Vendor Management

Your organization's accessibility is only as strong as your weakest vendor.

To ensure accessibility across your entire ecosystem, you need a procurement process that actively verifies, enforces, and monitors vendor accessibility. These best practices help you reduce risk and build a vendor landscape that supports your accessibility goals.

Best Practices for Accessible Procurement

Before Purchase:

• Verify vendor accessibility claims (don't just take their word for it).

• Request a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) to understand how a product meets accessibility standards.

• Assess vendor expertise and capacity in accessibility.

In Contracts:

• Include specific accessibility requirements.

• Define consequences for non-compliance.

• Require periodic accessibility roadmap updates.

Ongoing:

• Use your purchasing power to influence vendors toward better accessibility.

• Conduct periodic reviews of vendor accessibility compliance.

The ROI of Accessibility: Five Compelling Returns

Accessibility delivers measurable business value across the organization. Here are five key returns that make it a strategic investment, not just a compliance requirement

1. Universal Benefit
Accessibility features like captions, clear navigation, and readable text, which are essential for those with disabilities, are ultimately useful for all users. 

2. Customer Satisfaction and Acquisition
Accessible content improves engagement and is more user-friendly for all customers, increasing retention and acquisition.

3. Better Discoverability
Accessible websites are easier for search engines to index, boosting SEO and discoverability in voice experiences.

4. Legal Protection
Reduces legal risk, protects from lawsuits, and demonstrates compliance with regulations.

5. DEI Alignment
Strengthens your diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and demonstrates organizational values.

Bringing It All Together

Organizational accessibility is a long-term commitment to continuous improvement. It means:

• Making accessibility part of your strategy, not an afterthought.

• Giving people ownership and resources.

• Training your entire team, not just developers.

• Testing early and often.

• Including people with disabilities in both your workforce and your testing processes.

• Holding vendors accountable.

• Measuring your progress honestly.

Organizations that succeed don't treat accessibility like a checkbox. They treat it as an ongoing commitment to serving all users, respecting all people, and creating better products.

Whether you're at Stage 1 (Inactive) or Stage 3 (Integrate) on the maturity model, the question is the same: are you ready to move forward?

IAAP Suggested Study Resources