Overcompliance

The first thing that comes to mind for many people when we talk about compliance is under compliance – not meeting the minimum standards, and potentially facing legal repercussions as a result. But there is a flip side to that coin and a problem that can be equally challenging – over compliance.

In the course of working with hundreds of organizations over the years, we’ve been fortunate to work with teams of dedicated people who want to put digital accessibility front and center for their efforts. Like you, they bring enthusiasm and energy to the process and are ready to get started right away. But without certain important factors in place, even the best intentions can quickly turn into a jumble of disorganized initiatives that still fail to meet accessibility standards.

For example, in an eagerness to make an accessible site, we have seen a lot of people add descriptive text to any and every image on the website. While this sounds like a terrific idea, consider the users and use cases for the site. If you have a promotional offer on your homepage, and the relevant text is embedded in the image, then the descriptive text is essential to communicate that offer to visitors who are using screen readers.

On the other hand, let’s say you have a search results page that displays each product name in a list or grid view, along with a thumbnail image of each one. In this case, adding a description for each and every image creates duplicate information, and makes it more difficult for someone to read/navigate the page. The user will end up hearing the product or item name, then hearing it again from the description of the image, for each of the items listed in the search results.

The best bet is to approach accessibility with a complete understanding of assistive technology and how it works. From there, you can begin to understand how and where it might be most important for your site, application, or another digital tool.

So, where is the best place to start? A plan. Without a plan, the efforts you are making to develop for accessibility could be disjointed, and they may not work together to achieve your overall goals. Planning allows you to account for the possible assistive technology that may be used on your site, as well as thinking through the issues (such as the image example above) that could pose a challenge to your team and your users.

Every plan for digital accessibility starts with a few key questions. If you have also been working on developing an accessibility statement [LINK TO STATEMENT RESOURCE], some of these questions may already have been answered. For instance:

1. What accessibility standard are you working with, and what level of compliance (A-AAAA)?
2. When do you plan to achieve this level of compliance?
3. Who on your team will work on this?
4. How can they be contacted regarding accessibility issues?
5. How will complaints or issues be handled once received?
6. How will the individuals or team members be trained, and what tools will they be using?

Next, you’ll want to develop documentation for your requirements, as well as the “test scripts” you can use along the way. The starting point for these is defining user journeys on your site/app/etc.

1. What are the roles and goals for each type of user, and how will they navigate through the site?
2. How will we test each journey?
3. How will we define success for each of these journeys?
4. At what point will we know testing is complete/successful? (e.g. a purchase, a form submission, etc.)
5. What tools and processes will we use? For example, what screen reader type, browser version(s), and so on.

At a minimum, these items should be discussed and decided on before you get started on accessibility development. With all of these considerations agreed on, you can be sure you’ll get consistent results across teams or individuals, and you’ll know exactly when you have achieved the level of accessibility you set out to reach.