A presentation at Portland Accessibility and User Experience Meetup by Andrew Hedges
Devon Persing Digital Accessibility Consultant Andrew Hedges COO, Assistiv Labs
TL;dr, Achieving great outcomes is far easier when accessibility (a11y) is integrated across an organization. It takes people organized around smart processes & practices using tools that support rather than distract or detract from the goal.
“Continuous accessibility is defined as the approach to ensuring that code intended to be displayed in browsers can be continuously checked and monitored for digital accessibility requirements through a novel application of existing software engineering concepts and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).” Melanie Sumner Temple
– UX design (including content and research) – Project and program managers – Cross-functional roles and teams
– Strong tooling programs – Program management for a11y – Leadership support for a11y
CA promotes better outcomes across UX, risk, ROI, and your brand.
Episodic work interrupts, aggravates and creates resistance. It’s like swimming upstream.
Continuous work flows with processes & practices. It’s like swimming with the current.
Individuals and teams have periodic, often unplanned-for engagement with accessibility.
– Audits focus on already-released products – Accessibility work is focused on redesigning, repairing, retrofitting, and refactoring to address audit results – Code red/emergency shipping to put fixes into place – Occasional, “emergency” training that lacks context (usually with a hastily hired vendor) – Testing happens after work is already “done”
Individuals and teams have ongoing engagement with accessibility activities.
– Testing happens during each phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) – Accessibility work is done all the time (i.e., not just during twice a year sprints) – Accessibility issues are prioritized and fixed alongs with other bugs – Training is informed by individuals’ roles and contextual to the work that people are doing
There is no one way or one solution to do any of these things.
Continuous accessibility is a system that works best with at least three things:
– People – Processes & practices – Tools
– Different roles – Different experiences and backgrounds – Community with disabled people
Setting realistic accessibility goals and measuring maturity requires knowing both of these.
– Process: What are people supposed to be doing? – Practice: What are people actually doing?
– Need to support accessibility goals across the SDLC – Need to fit with processes instead of forcing them – Need to be held to a high standard
Based on End-to-end testing leveled up the way Asana engineers think about accessibility
– People – Processes & practices – Tools
Asana invested in building out a cross-functional accessibility team including program management, product management, engineering leadership, accessibility specialists, and QA.
– Started with automated scanners + manual QA – Made a distinction between audit bugs and regressions
Assistiv Labs’ Evergreen Accessibility Audits service delivered 2 unique capabilities:
– Every regression now has a recorded “before” and “after” state. – The speed of bug reporting means developers are often still in the context of the work that caused the bug.
– People: Having a team covering the several roles involved in the work is key to making progress in a big organization working on a complex product. – Processes & practices: It’s important to understand what systems & parameters are going to make sense within your organization’s culture. – Tools: Integrating great tools can unlock stepwise improvements in effectiveness.
CA requires changing people, processes & practices, and (sometimes) tools.
– Impact climate instead of culture. – Go where people already are. – Build competence, not expertise.
– Set by leadership – Official missions, values, and goals – Official policy and procedure
– Set by the majority – Unofficial missions, values, and goals – Unofficial policy, process, and practice
– Enable people – Engage with existing process and practice – Use tools you already have
There is no one way or one solution to do any of these things.
– Identify allies – If you don’t have a community of practice around accessibility, start one – Influence your climate – Encourage information literacy so people can think critically and make their own decisions
– Find out what people are doing right now so you can build a picture and benchmark to start tracking maturity – Put information in places people already go, such as role or team handbooks, design systems, and component libraries – Prioritize accessibility work that prevents harm and blocks users from completing tasks
– Use what you have available—using something is better than nothing—and use it consistently to set a baseline – Automate what you can automate – Gradually introduce other testing tools and manual testing
Find us on Bluesky! @devonpersing.bsky.social @segdeha.com
Often relegated to episodic efforts such as late-stage audits and ad hoc projects, digital accessibility is most effective and efficient when it is the organization’s default mode of operation. Making the shift to continuous accessibility leads to better outcomes across the board, including improving the experience of disabled users, mitigating the risk of accessibility-related lawsuits, improving brand reputation, and even creating a positive return on investment (ROI).
In this talk we provide practical strategies for embedding accessibility into daily routines and technical systems, demonstrating how to start small and scale over time. Key topics include:
A real world case study illustrates how the strategic application of automated regression testing and clear bug prioritization led to a profound cultural shift where accessibility is treated like any other product quality concern. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas for initiating and sustaining cultural change, making the case for accessibility as a core business principle.
Devon Persing is your neighbor to the north in Seattle, WA. Before joining “big” tech as an accessibility specialist around 2012, she worked in “small” tech as a UI designer, front-end web developer, and usability advocate in libraries, higher education, and local government. She has an MS in Information and is disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent, and as a result her approach to digital accessibility centers information literacy, organization dynamics, and disability justice. Her current focus as a solo consultant is on helping people do accessibility work that is more holistic, inclusive, cooperative, and sustainable. She wrote a book called The Accessibility Operations Guidebook with that goal in mind.
Portlander by birth and by choice, Andrew Hedges is COO for Assistiv Labs, an accessibility tooling company based in the PNW. His 28-year career as a web developer and engineering leader has taken him to companies from Apple to Zapier. As a longtime advocate for improving the usability of websites for people with disabilities, Andrew would love nothing more than for accessibility to become the default so we can finally realize the original promise of the web to democratize access to information for everyone.
for free. You
can too.