Many organizations today are struggling with knowing the best way to support accessibility and how to maintain accessibility compliance over time. Complying with WCAG 2.0 is a corporate-wide effort and goes well beyond technical accessibility. This webinar will discuss how to integrate accessibility across your organization and how to assess where you are on the accessibility maturity scale using the Capability Maturity Model.
Where is Your Organization on the Accessibility Maturity Scale?
Overview: Many organizations today are struggling with knowing the best way to support accessibility and how to maintain accessibility compliance over time. Complying with WCAG 2.0 is a corporate-wide effort and goes well beyond technical accessibility. This webinar will discuss how to integrate accessibility across your organization and how to assess where you are on the accessibility maturity scale using the Capability Maturity Model.
Speaker Talking Notes:
Accessibility today is getting more attention
There are a number of reasons for this:
In the United States, it is because of the number of demand letters and lawsuits around accessibility
Globally there is a significant increase in the implementation of regulations, standards and policies for accessibility
Organizations are also realizing that with the change in demographics and the aging population, that lack of accessibility can impact sales and revenue. As the people age, the more likely it is that they will acquire a disability whether that be problems with their eye sight, arthritis in the hands which makes it more difficult to do fine motor movement or other issues that make it more difficult for them to interact with a computer or mobile device.
When organizations first start looking at accessibility, they realize how expensive it is and this goes beyond the costs for an accessibility audit. Retrofitting a product for accessibility requires organizations to devote design, development and significant amount of time to testing and quality assurance.
Integrating accessibility within organizations processes and procedures is key to getting costs down to ensuring that products are accessible and remain accessible over time
Speaker Notes:
So what are we talking about when we say “maturity”?
Maturity is all about how well the business is run. Organizations today are spending a lot of time, effort and money on business process improvement to reduce cost and get greater customer satisfaction. In fact, half of global executives rate capability building as top 3 priority according to McKinsey & Co survey conducted in 2015 and more than 70% of organizations cite capabilities gaps as one of their top five challenges according to Bersin by Deloitte
There are a number of different maturity models that define a set of essential practices and processes, and describes a common sense, efficient and proven ways of doing business. They provide a framework for measuring the maturity business processes
The goal is to have processes that are well-defined, repeatable, measured, analyzed, improved and effective.
(http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/building-capabilities-for-performance)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/04/the-recovery-arrives-corporate-training-spend-skyrockets/#754a5da8c5a7
How do I know if my organization has mature processes?
An immature organization will have the following characteristics
Talk through slide bullets
In contrast, the characteristics of the mature organization are
Talk through slide bullets
PACS was built based on the experience of working with organizations over the past 10 years.
No organization is the same
Digital Accessibility maturity is also impacted by the organizations level of maturity overall – if organization does not have a clear methodology for their software development lifecycle, then it will be difficult to incorporate accessibility processes and procedures
General goals and objectives are same across small to large organizations but the activities done will be different depending on the organization
Can also be applied to a line of business – instead of looking at the whole organization
Speaker Notes:
CMM is a method to evaluate and measure the maturity of the software development process of an organization.
CMMI is the successor of the CMM and evolved as a more matured set of guidelines and was built combining the best components of individual disciplines of CMM. It can be applied to product manufacturing, people management, software development, etc.
Both were developed to help organizations identify where they are, where they want to be and what factors need to be overcome for a business process to perform excellently
It describes capabilities or areas of related skills and competencies that are needed and assures a uniform way of working and continuously looks for ways to improve and optimize the process
Method to evaluate and measure the maturity of processes
Developed to help organizations identify
Where they are
Where they want to be
What factors need to be overcome
To ensure that they get there
Competently
Confidently
CMM measures the maturity of the processes on a scale of 1 to 5.
Each maturity level provides a necessary foundation for effective implementation of processes at the next level.
Levels cannot be skipped
The different levels are:
Ad hoc – no formal policies, processes and procedures for accessibility; poorly controlled and reactive; success depends on individual effort
Repeatable – basic policies, processes and procedures for accessibility are defined to repeat earlier success at the project level but is often still reactive
Defined – repeatable processes and procedures for accessibility across the organization; best practices integrated; accessibility is proactive
Managed – accessibility metrics are defined and accessibility is measured and tracked to view progress
Optimizing – processes are in place to improve and optimize processes and procedures for accessibility; focus is on needs of people with disabilities; baked into corporate DNA
Speaker Notes:
There is a lot to PACS, but this is just a 50,000-feet level; measures the maturity of digital accessibility processes and procedures in 10 key areas
Governance & support to measure the degree digital accessibility program is defined and operationally implemented, as well as level of ownership and executive support
Accessibility Policies and Standards to assess the maturity digital accessibility policy and standards within the organization
Legal to measure the degree integration of accessibility as part of the regulatory process and risk assessments of the organization
Development lifecycle integration to measure the degree accessibility is included into the software development lifecycle
Procurement to measure the degree accessibility is included into procurement processes and procedures
Accessibility Infrastructure to assess the integration of accessibility tools, the degree in which accessibility is included style guides, pattern libraries and other resources that drive the development of products
Tracking and Measurement – the degree in which testing processes and tracking measures are implemented
Accessibility Competence measures the degree to which an accessibility training program is deployed, and integrated in HR processes and procedures
Communication Support and Grievances broadly measures the maturity of the organization in communicating its digital accessibility program activities and communications from people with disabilities
Culture broadly measures the maturity of hiring processes and processes that accounts for the specific needs of candidates with disabilities; and the maturity disability/inclusion ERG. Overall it measures the inclusiveness of the organizations culture.
Governance & support to measure the degree digital accessibility program is defined and operationally implemented, as well as level of ownership and executive support
Accessibility Policies and Standards to assess the maturity digital accessibility policy and standards within the organization
Development lifecycle integration to measure the degree accessibility is included into the software development lifecycle
Procurement to measure the degree accessibility is included into procurement processes and procedures
Accessibility Competence measures the degree to which an accessibility training program is deployed, and integrated in HR processes and procedures
Speaker Notes:
This is a simplified view of where you are at. To assess accessibility maturity, you need to look at more aspects of the program but hopefully this webinar today has given you some ideas of how you can improve your accessibility programs and insights into some of the aspects that are important to have in place at your organization.