4: Creating Digital Accessibility Culture

In this unit, you learned the following about creating a digital accessibility culture:

• Accessibility auditing is an important step. Choosing a reputable service involves careful consideration focusing on key reputability factors.
• Two approaches to accessible websites are retrofitting and starting over. The correct approach for your situation will need to consider several factors including outsourcing the work to external vendors.
• Building a company-wide strategy about accessibility includes building awareness, hiring people with disabilities, focused presentations, and training.
• Web development accessibility guidelines focus on user interaction with a website whereas web content accessibility guidelines focus more on standards compliance. Both are important.
• Several approaches should be used to monitor adherence to accessibility guidelines including unbiased quality assurance reviews and the use of automated tools.
• Implementing accessibility will include managing change. Kotter’s Eight-Step Model for Leading Change and Lewin’s Three-Step Model are two common models that can help when planning and facilitating the implementation.
• Resistance by staff may be the most challenging element in implementing change and overcoming the five main reasons people resist change needs to be part of your change management strategy.