Web Access Centre

Maintenance

Summary: Once you have an accessible site you cannot stop there. Evaluation and ongoing monitoring will guarantee maximum return on your investment of time and money.

• Benchmarking
• Create an accessibility policy
• Document development techniques and processes
• Training and awareness
• Style guide
• Plan and test links

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After designing and building an accessible website it is essential that standards continue to be implemented and adhered to. Processes and procedures should be put in place which monitor and support standards.

If this is not done the level of accessibility you have implemented will degrade under the pressures and priorities of “business as usual”, changes in technology, development techniques and day-to-day authoring.

Potentially you could find yourself a year down the line with what was once a flagship website, now failing an accessibility audit. This could be both costly to fix and embarrassing when badges and awards which were once proudly displayed, have to be removed because the site is no longer compliant.

There are a number of actions that you can take to combat these risks before the work is undertaken.

Benchmarking

One way to gauge how best to tackle this type of work is to undertake a benchmarking exercise. Evaluate how your peers have implemented accessibility; how have they set their priorities and what was problematic or successful for them.

Create an accessibility policy

A high-level accessibility policy, agreed and signed-off by the most senior people within your organisation, will ensure a proper level of support and credibility that will make everyone involved take it seriously.

Not having high-level support from the outset means that other people and areas within your organisation may end up pulling in different directions, developing their own priorities and time scales for accessibility or not getting budget or resource to do the work. Other areas may even simply ignore the need for accessibility altogether because it is not acknowledged as a need, or seen as a priority.

A policy will prove invaluable when seeking budget and resources for accessibility work. You will find the information contained in the business, legal and ethical sections of this site useful when tackling this.

A mission statement outlining the commitment to accessibility responsibilities, with specific goals for implementation should be included in the policy.

Document development techniques and processes

An accessibility policy can be used to underpin the planning and development work that is required. It will help to ensure that your desired level of accessibility is implemented and maintained on a “business as usual” footing.

It is essential to properly agree and document the processes, methods and techniques that are to be used by managers, designers and developers. This will ensure clarity about what is expected of them and the targets they must achieve.

Once these have been agreed and published, they can be used to make certain that accessibility is factored into early consideration of any development work or changes that will be undertaken. This will help those managers, designers and developers set up timetables for revisions, updates and development which factor in accessibility as standard.

It will also introduce defined goals that can be used as measures for quality assuring work that is being produced and will form the basis of undertaking regular assessments to determine whether or not the overall integrity of the accessibility work is being maintained. These assessments could be undertaken at agreed stages, for example on an annual basis. The results can be evaluated and fed back into the policies and processes as required to adjust for any future developments.

Training and awareness

It cannot be overstated that training is critical. It can mean the difference between successful accessibility work and expensive failure.

Providing effective accessibility technique training and educating staff about the issues that need to be tackled is vital to the success of even the best set-up and organised accessibility work.

This is the most important tool you have in terms of changing the behaviour of your team to overcome ingrained bad habits and learn new skills and best practices.

If the people who manage, develop, maintain and create content do not fully understand why they need to address accessibility issues and are not clear about what is expected of them, then they are likely to stick to what they know. This may result in even the best accessibility policy being undermined or even collapsing.

A well thought out and delivered programme of training and awareness can dramatically improve the level of support and willingness of the people involved to adopt new working methods. If pitched correctly it will help them catch the “accessibility vision” and realise that ultimately accessibility can make their work more effective and efficient.

Building accessibility work into job profiles and contracts will also support your training and awareness programme. Managers will subsequently recognise and even reward the contribution made by their staff and opportunities should be provided to formally assess and tackle staff performance in this area.

Style guide

Another useful tool to support your accessibility policy and training programme is to draw up an agreed in-house style guide to be used by those who develop and write content. They can then refer to this as an accepted set of guidelines on what should and should not be done in terms of writing and publishing on your website.

A style guide will ensure that the entire team uses a universal standard and will help to eliminate the day-to-day errors that creep into the upkeep of a site. These usually manifest themselves as inconstancy, but ultimately can accumulate into larger problems over a period of time and significantly degrade the level of accessibility that had once been achieved.

Plan and test links

• Planning
• Content Management Systems
• Intranets
• Checklists
• Testing
• Evaluation and monitoring
• Return to implementing accessibility

For Web Access Centre updates email webaccess@rnib.org.uk

Content author: webaccess@rnib.org.uk

Last updated: 06/03/2008 15:41