This document discusses accessibility management and outlines who is affected by accessibility issues as well as the legal and financial incentives for organizations to address accessibility. It notes that 18% of the UK population has a disability and many more have other issues that could be helped by accessible websites and digital services. Ensuring accessibility avoids potential legal issues and costs while gaining benefits such as a wider audience and improved search engine rankings. The challenges of maintaining accessibility expertise and compliance are also discussed along with AbilityNet's managed service called iCOMPLY that helps organizations meet those challenges.
3. Who’s Affected?
Your stakeholders:
18% of UK population has a disability – and growing
Many millions more have dyslexia or literacy difficulties
Aging population
More and more people using online services - on more
and more platforms
4. The Sticks
It’s the law – Equality Act, Disability Equality
Duty, employment law
Potential cost of litigation
Lose employees, customers and clients
Cost of medical retirement, recruitment and retraining
Bad publicity/brand damage
Retrofitting accessibility more costly and more difficult
5. Public Sector – Leading the Way?
“Fairness is not an additional cost on the public sector.
Fairness is why we have a public sector”
Patrick Diamond, Group Director Strategy
Equality and Human Rights Commission
6. The Carrots
Reach a wider audience – up to 20%
Makes your site more useable for everyone – by 35%
More mobile-friendly
Reduces page weight, bandwidth and maintenance
Improves search engine rankings
Easier to refresh
Your disabled employees (of today and tomorrow)
7. Happy Birthday BS 8878
BS8878 ‘Web Accessibility Code of Practice’
Published 7 Dec 2010
Guidance on designing or commissioning ‘web products’
Focus on process rather than technical or design issues
Fewer horror stories BUT still all too common
8. The Challenge
The challenge is to:
Gain and retain accessibility expertise across all your IT
and web teams
Stay abreast of developments in technical standards,
regulations and legislation
HTML5, WCAG, ARIA, MWBP, TG102
Ensure expertise is based on real user experience
Access disabled users for ‘real-life’ compliance
11. iCOMPLY – A Managed Approach
AbilityNet’s iCOMPLY:
Access professional support
from a single source
Embedded expertise – a
consultant regularly on-site
Fast turnaround on queries
Cross-department management reporting
12. iCOMPLY – A Managed Approach
Additional benefits:
Weekly full-site scans
with Compliance Sheriff®
Access to strategic and technical
guideline library
Online resource ‘My Computer My Way’
Achieve AbilityNet accessibility accreditation
13. The BBC: My Computer My Way
“As a public service website,
our goal is to ensure that we
serve all our users; with AbilityNet,
we are making this objective a reality”
Jonathan Hassell,
Head of Usability and Accessibility, BBC
15. Virgin Atlantic
New site 68% uplift in
revenue to £62m
Won best website at
Travel Industry Awards
16. Legal & General
Relaunched accessible site
+95% Life quote requests online
+90% Life Insurance sales online
100% Return on Investment in 12 months
Saved £200k pa on site maintenance (66% saving)
Speed/effort required to manage content reduced
from an average of 5 days to 0.5 days per job
18. Compliance With Confidence
Are you up to the challenge?
Invest in accessibility
Goes hand-in-hand with a mature
mobile strategy
Make all your web properties inclusive
www.abilitynet.org.uk/icomply