Leave Your Print On A More Accessible World
In the July Knapp Strategic newsletter, I introduced Accessiversity’s new tagline: “Leave your print on a more accessible world”. More than just some catchy slogan, this new tagline is intended to be a call to action for everybody to do their part to make the world a more accessible place, because the sort of change that Accessiversity is advocating for will require a concerted effort of like-minded organizations and people who value continuous improvement and understand that accessibility is not a one-and-done type of proposition. While the tagline is for the most part self-explanatory, I thought this would be a good opportunity to provide some additional context for our readers, by describing some of the circumstances and the underlying philosophy which contributed to Accessiversity’s unique approach to accessibility testing.
Going Back To The Start
Like other impactful inventions that are born out of necessity, the origins of Accessiversity started with a simple solution to a problem that needed solving. Before I go on, I need to take a moment to provide a little background on some of the key players and their roles in the events that transpired.
Through my other consulting work, Knapp Strategic has been providing consultative services to Beyond Our Barriers (BOB) for Michigan, which is an organization focused on helping individuals with disabilities connect with prospective employers and employment opportunities. Beyond Our Barriers was working with a counselor from Michigan Rehabilitation Services (MRS) that was co-located on Michigan State University’s campus to assist those MSU students who qualified for services through MRS. MRS had contracted with BOB to line up a series of job shadow opportunities for this computer science major who had a special interest in information security. As part of my subsequent outreach to some area employers I thought might be willing to serve as potential sites for hosting this student for a job shadow opportunity, I contacted Clarke Anderson, CEO of A.J. Boggs & Company, who I first got to know back when I was serving as Executive Director of the Capital Area IT Council.
When I started explaining what I was calling about, Clarke stopped me and suggested that I come by his office so that we could talk through everything in person. A.J. Boggs & Company is an East Lansing-based IT firm which is housed in the Eyde Medical Building on South Hagadorn Road, right across the street from MSU’s campus. Shortly after arriving at the office, Clarke took me on a quick tour of their suite. During this tour, Clarke explained that they had recently exercised a lease to expand their office to build-out a series of new work stations for a helpdesk project, which unfortunately didn’t pan out. There, as I stood inspecting the brand-new workstations and desktop computers, just a stone’s throw from MSU’s campus, I started to mutter what I was thinking before my brain even had a chance to fully form the thought.
I turned to Clarke and said, “Wouldn’t it be great, if we could take some of these MSU students we are working with through BOB, and partner with A.J. Boggs to create some sort of drop-in lab setting here in this section of your office that isn’t being used?” I continued, “They could literally walk across the street which would be super convenient for working a part-time job in between classes, and we could line up different client projects for them to work on so that they could gain experience while earning a little bit of money.”
Initially, I proposed that maybe we could have the students staff some sort of call center, and then Clarke said that A.J. Boggs occasionally has customers who need accessibility assessments done, so perhaps we could have the students perform accessibility testing. The more we talked about and fleshed out the accessibility testing lab concept, the more I became excited thinking about the possibilities. Finally, I turned to Clarke and said, “You know, as someone who has had to rely on assistive technology for most of my adult life – what you’re describing that these lab associates would be asked to do in the course of performing accessibility testing – again, as someone who uses this assistive technology all of the time, I think I would get a lot out of actually being one of these lab associates, because just going through the process of performing these accessibility tests would help me to better understand the underlying technologies, and ultimately I’d become more proficient at using these tools.” This idea that it would be both a testing and learning lab is how we originally coined the name Accessiverssity, but as I will explain later on in this blog, this focus on learning doesn’t just apply to our lab associates, it’s something that permeates practically every facet of everything that we do.
Before we move on, it’s worth noting that our long-term plan for Accessiversity is to one day establish some sort of permanent lab setting, either physical, virtual or some sort of hybrid, where we would take our lab associates through a series of tiered trainings and have them work on progressively more complex client projects. Then, we could eventually graduate them from Accessiversity, and hopefully get them placed as entry level QA analysts with some of the local tech employers who could utilize them to help with software testing and performing accessibility/usability assessments. Again, we know this is an ambitious goal, and it’s still a little ways down the road, but we are off to a great start. As we continue to grow and take on additional clients and projects, we will eventually make our vision a reality.
Our Approach
Accessiversity is an innovative accessibility and usability testing and learning lab. We offer businesses a safe, proactive way for them to dip their toes in the water to see how well they’re doing when it comes to accessibility. Everything we uncover through the course of our assessments is kept completely confidential. We provide the client with our findings and recommendations, and they can choose to use this information however they please. Some clients choose to have their internal IT staff make the necessary fixes, but for those businesses requiring more technical remediation and/or who might be considering a complete site redesign, Accessiversity is able to assist with referrals to local IT solutions providers that specialize in accessibility remediation and design. The most important part is to get the business starting to think about accessibility, even if it’s initially only baby steps.
When consulting with a prospective business client, I usually don’t even talk about the legal and ethical reasons for ensuring that their website and systems are accessible – which don’t get me wrong, are extremely important reasons why a business should pay attention to accessibility issues. Instead, I jump right to the business case for web accessibility, explaining that having a website or system that isn’t completely accessible could mean that some customers aren’t able to find information about your business, products and/or services, which equates to lost revenue and missed opportunities to engage with this sizable segment of the market.
But I don’t stop there. I explain that, as a business, the minimal threshold should be to make sure that your website and systems are accessible, but really, what businesses should be striving for is to make their websites more usable for all of their customers. And here’s the thing, if a business takes the steps to make their website or system more accessible, by default, they’re going to be making their website or system more usable at the same time. No offense to my developer friends, but even websites that are technically compliant from an accessibility perspective might not be as usable as they could be, which are the kinds of things that Accessiversity is able to point out through it’s assessments, and why we refer to ourselves as both an accessibility and usability resource.
What Makes Us Different
By utilizing actual individuals with disabilities to perform these assessments, Accessiversity is able to provide for an authentic “accessibility experience” so that our clients will have a better understanding of how individuals with disabilities, who oftentimes use assistive technology to access digital content, will be interacting with their web site or system.
Another way to look at it is to think about it in terms of something else that businesses can relate to: The concept of the ethical hacker.
While an ethical computer hacker is a computer security expert who specializes in penetration testing and other testing methodologies to ensure the security of an organization’s information systems, an authentic tester like the ones used by Accessiversity, specifically an individual with a disability who utilizes assistive technology to perform the accessibility assessment, is in their own way a subject-matter expert specializing in accessibility for ensuring compliance with Federal Section 508 Standards and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The operative word here is “authentic”, because at the end of the day, any developer can use an off-the-shelf screen reader to test a site that they are designing, or consult any number of widgets out there for captioning video, or ensuring minimum color contrast ratios, but until you have actually lived with a disability, and have no other choice but to rely on that assistive technology to navigate this increasingly digital world, it will just never qualify as “authentic”.
Let’s Learn Together
Earlier in this article I talked about how the idea of learning permeates every facet of everything we do here at Accessiversity. This is because we believe in a collaborative, iterative process that involves our clients at each step along the way.
“We have been partnering with Accessiversity to ensure that we are able to meet our customer’s needs by providing accessibility to all. Accessiversity has been very thorough in their process and continues to give us the ability to see first-hand how our services are viewed by those with disabilities. They analyzed portions of our website and online banking services to ensure that we are not only compliant with ADA requirements, but also a user-friendly resource for customers with disabilities. Not only have they been able to point out improvements but have also been there along the way during the process for clarification and post change ideas. We have been very impressed with their service and are proud to partner with a company that is willing to bring positive change.”
There is this guinea pig analogy that I like to use as part of the “Web Accessibility 101” training that I sometimes do for developer teams. The excerpt from that particular slide kind of sums it up for me, it says something to the effect of:
“When it comes to accessibility and usability, we are all guinea pigs, and we should embrace that role. Every project is an experiment, every issue is an opportunity to learn and improve on what we have done before.”
As lab associates we are constantly learning new and better ways to advise our clients on how to make their websites and systems more accessible, and it’s really no different for our business clients. We want them to learn from their experience working with us so they can apply those lessons learned to future projects, and will ultimately find themselves equipped with the specialized knowledge and skills needed to adhere to basic accessibility standards.
This is why we refer to Accessiversity as both a testing and learning lab.
How Will You Leave Your Print?
Which brings us full circle, and once again, back to our new tagline: “Leave your print on a more accessible world”.
Like I said before, this is an unequivocal call to action, an impassioned plea to get up off of the sidelines, roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Ask yourself, what is it that I’m going to do to make the world a more accessible place?
As a business you can do your part by contracting with Accessiversity to complete an assessment of your website. It doesn’t even have to be a full, comprehensive assessment. We can usually do a decent preliminary assessment for as little as $750, which will get you in the game, and well on your way to becoming a more accessible and inclusive organization.
In addition, we can usually perform most of our assessments without ever having to actually visit your place of business, so there is no need to take extra safety precautions during the current COVID-19 health crisis.
For our existing clients/prospective repeat customers, please consider contracting with Accessiversity to conduct routine testing of your website or system. Have us periodically test pages after new content is added, or some new feature that you recently rolled out or are thinking about adding. Best case scenario, our assessment is going to make your site more usable for all of your customers, and at the very least, having Accessiversity conduct an assessment of your site is a cost-effective way to monitor for potential accessibility issues, which is a great insurance policy for you and your organization.
If you are a local web design firm, or you’re part of the team at one of these large end-user organizations who do their web development in-house, consider budgeting for Accessiversity to conduct some “live” (manual) testing of your prototype site to augment the user acceptance testing that you typically do prior to pushing a site into production.
To all of my friends and family, and anyone else who may have stumbled upon this blog post, please subscribe to our monthly Knapp Strategic newsletter to receive notifications about the latest posts on our “Tales of the Reluctant Blind” blog. Please also follow and like and continue to engage with our Accessiversity Facebook page. We need you to be part of this important conversation and help us build awareness about these different accessibility and disability-related topics. It’s the only way that we’re ever going to be able to move the needle. I know that most of you aren’t living with a disability like I am, but chances are that at some point in your life, you or someone you care about is going to acquire a disability, so this is an issue that affects us all.
And finally, all of you work for organizations that are potential customers of Accessiversity. Ask the people who are in charge of your organization’s website what they are doing to ensure that it is accessible for individuals with disabilities, and encourage them to look into the resources and services that we are able to provide through Accessiversity. I realize that these are sometimes tough issues to bring up – trust me, I’ve been having these difficult conversations my entire adult life. But if no one is willing to ask the hard questions, nothing will ever change.
Please do your part. Contribute your voice. Make this work a priority. Enact real change for us individuals with disabilities. For your friends and neighbors. For us all.
Leave your print on a more accessible world.
