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.

1. Robert
Christopherson
Head of Digital Inclusion
AbilityNet

2. Accessibility Management
in a Nutshell

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

9. Number 10 Website – Meeting the Challenge?

10. Hi-Impact Relationships

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

14. IBM Intranet
Accessible Intranet
 Saved 40 % + in bandwidth
 Better able to share and
adapt information

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

17. mydonate

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