Getting started

1. 1 in 5 people have a permanent disability and we all encounter temporary and situational disabilities every day

2. Many disabilities affect how people interact with their devices

3. Being accessible means everyone, regardless of their ability, can use what you make

4. Accessibility is everyone's responsibility

5. Accessibility can feel overwhelming, but please know it takes time to learn and can be put into practice little by little

6. Don’t try to “boil the ocean” – tackle a bit at a time, learning as you go

7. Accessibility should be built in from the start, saving much time and effort in the long run – 3%-5% additional effort initially, compared to >20% additional effort if retrofitting afterwards (Source: Blazie)

8. The global WCAG standards can be boiled down to 5 main considerations: Design, Content, Keyboard-only, Screen Readers and Magnification (more on this later)

9. Accessibility makes your products better for ALL users, not just disabled people

10. Being 100% accessible is often impossible – we're aiming to be more accessible tomorrow than we are today

We suggest all of the following:

1. Carry out some usability testing with people with diverse access requirements. This may be a humbling experience as the testers may well struggle to complete the task in hand. Share this with key stakeholders in your business.

2. Run Empathy Labs where you simulate disabilities, putting people in the shoes of others for a moment.

3. Provide short, free, introductory training, like the Microsoft – Accessibility Fundamentals course

4. Talk to teams and individuals about the importance of accessibility and the particular role they play in making what you do accessible

Buy-in from the top is vital. You can make some headway without it, but embedding accessibility into your culture won’t be possible without leadership support. The more buy-in you have, the easier it will be and the quicker you’ll be on your way to creating wonderfully accessible products! See our Business Case for more info.

Plotting where you are on a Digital Accessibility Maturity Model is super helpful to show leaders where you are and how much you have to do to be considered accessible. If you’re just starting out, you’re likely to have a way to go.

Accessibility is everyone’s responsibility, but making it someone’s job to lead progress in this area is a game changer. Strategies are created, roadmaps are planned, knowledge is increased, and progress is measured. All resulting in more accessible products and services.

It’s important to have leadership buy-in prior to this stage, as it will be hard for the responsible person to be effective without it.

Everyone in the product development process needs to know how to build accessibility considerations into what they do.

The “bible” set of guidelines is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1, Level AA. Legislation is based on these guidelines and audits are carried out against them. Most other sets of guidelines are based on these – just simplified versions.

Other guidelines suggestions are:

1. Designing for accessibility – Designing for Web Accessibility by the W3C and our own Accessibility for Product Designers guide

2. Writing for accessibility – Writing for Web Accessibility by the W3C and our own Accessibility for Content Designers

3. Building for accessibility – BBC's Mobile Accessibility Guidelines and our own Accessibility for Engineers guide. For apps – iOS Accessibility Guidelines and Android – Designing for Accessibility.

4. Product management – Getting started: Accessibility for Product Managers from the US Government and our own Accessibility for Product Owners guide

Get an expert to carry out an accessibility audit on your products to find out where the main problems are. You can then start fixing the “low hanging fruit” – the issues that affect lots of people but are relatively easy to fix. It’s great to carry out an audit early in your journey to give you a feel for where you are.

For guidance on arranging an audit, see GOV.UK – Getting an accessibility audit.

You could also organise some testing with disabled users to find out if you’ve created any blockers for them, or what could be improved to make their journey easier.

Making sure your products remain accessible requires accessibility best practice and checks to be built into ALL relevant product development processes. These are some of the documents and processes that we’re building accessibility into:

1. Project requirements templates

2. User research

3. Usability testing

4. Design briefs

5. Design review sessions

6. Design handover files

7. Definition of done

8. PR templates

9. Unit testing

10. Manual testing

11. CI testing

12. Quality assurance (QA)

In our experience, this takes time. So the earlier you start working on it, the better!

To be truly successful in this area, accessibility needs to just be part of what you do. Part of what you stand for.

Building an Accessibility Champions Network is a great way to spread awareness and knowledge right across your business. Champions are great at being the voice of your disabled user – always reminding their team to be inclusive.

Making accessibility part of your corporate goals means everyone is aware it’s important, and will work on making it happen. It takes a long time to fully establish accessibility as “business as usual”, but that’s what you’re aiming for.