Inaccessible software carries with it a certain technical debt, which tallied up is enormous? How do you address this waste? The presentation proposes a labeling system to let users and developers tell which software is accessible.

1. Claudio Luis Vera, Royal Caribbean Cruises
Built for All
A badge for accessibility

2. Hats that I’ve worn
I manage digital accessibility
in a Fortune 500 company
after a 25-year career in
UX design and development. Front-
end
developer
Open source
contributor
UX
Designer
QA /
Testing
Management
Certified
A11y
professional
Analyst
C L A U D I O L U I S V E R A , R O YA L C A R I B B E A N

3. A photo slider
A popular component by a single
independent developer
• 15,000 downloads
• 10,000 instances in production
Requires a simple 2–hour fix to be
properly accessible
C L A U D I O L U I S V E R A , R O Y A L C A R I B B E A N

4. 4
10,000 x 2
hours of technical debt
10-person years, compared to the 300 hours it took to develop

5. Popular WordPress themes
Divi
• 1.15 million live websites
• Requires a separate divi-accessibility
plugin
• Let’s assume an average of 8 hours to
make it accessible
C L A U D I O L U I S V E R A , R O Y A L C A R I B B E A N

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1,150,000 x 8
hours of technical debt
4,600 person-years from one theming framework alone

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Q: What could you do with that kind of manpower?

8. A: Quite a bit, actually
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9. Taking this further
• Consider every WordPress theme or
component (30% of the Web)
• Add other products, Sitecore, SharePoint,
Adobe, Drupal , Joomla, React, etc.
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???
What is the worldwide accessibility debt?
Important economic metric that’s never been computed.

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???
What is the worldwide accessibility debt?
Important economic metric that’s never been computed.
How do you address this debt?

12. Product labeling
Allow developers and product owners
to select products and components
that don’t carry technical debt.

13. A technology badge
Proposed: an accessibility badge, and the
infrastructure and community required to
sustain it.
1.3

14. What’s needed?
A transparent testing
methodology based
on open standards
An established
workflow for
handling testing
A community of
trusted testers with
adequate training
Infrastructure for:
• automated testing
• project sites with
issue queues and
comments

15. Also needed
• Sufficient resources
• A compelling business plan
• Strong brand awareness
• Endorsement from
established entities

16. Semantic versioning
• Avoids certifying
obsolete components
• Protects against
regression
• Incentive for repeat
testing
1.3.2MAJOR
not valid
after updates
MINOR
partly valid
after updates
PATCH
fully valid
after updates
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17. Testing and tiers
• Bronze:
Automated testing only
• Gold:
Automated and manual testing
• Platinum
Automated and manual testing by
experienced auditors
1.3 2.4 3.1
0
P L A T I N U MG O L D

18. Issue queue
• Tracks progress through the
evaluation progress
• Allows testers and contributors to
comment and upload patches
• Reviewed and tested by the
community (RTBC) stamp

19. A diverse community
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authors testers contributorsmembers sponsors governance

20. The community
Basic members:
• Volunteers to report issues
• Volunteers for documentation
Authors
• Provide software and components for
review
• First line for remediation

21. Testers and evaluators
Usability testing participants
• Have moderate experience
with assistive technology
• Don’t write audits
Junior testers
• Trained in very specific
tasks
• Can be an onramp to
certification
Trusted testers
• Experts in assistive
technologies
• Experienced at writing
audits

22. Contributors
Contributors
• Developers for contributing new
testing tools and methods
• Developers for writing patches
• Mentors and trainers for more junior
members
Perform peer review through pull
requests of fellow contributors’ work

23. Sponsorship
Sponsors
• Individuals / contributing members
• Companies that provide in-kind
support such as trusted tester
resources for more ambitious projects
• Financial underwriters that contribute
to the community’s overall operating
budget
• Infrastructure sponsors

24. Infrastructure
Public servers
• Serve the community’s web site,
member profiles and issue queues
Testing/CI server
• for hosting automated testing and
downloadable testbots
Code servers
• for hosting the issue queue and
projects with git integration

25. Evolution
Shared code
repositories
Team level code shares
Style guides
KSS
A11y Style Guide
Internal design
systems
Fortune 1000
corporations
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Shared design
systems
Material Design
(Google)
Fluent Design
(Microsoft)
Design Language System
(Airbnb)

26. Types of projects to date
Whitelists and project
directories:
WAI’s list of Accessible UI
Components
Global Public Inclusive
Infrastructure (GPII)
The A11y Style Guide
Accessible frameworks
Inclusive Components by
Heydon Pickering
Groups in established
communities
Drupal, Foundation,
WordPress, React
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27. Crawl, Walk, Run
C L A U D I O L U I S V E R A , R O Y A L C A R I B B E A N

28. Crawl
• Recruit core contributors
• Set up first-generation
infrastructure
• Set up trusted tester
program
• Set up governance
• Branding
• Articles
• Recruit in-kind donors
• Secure seed funding
• Pilot projects within
organizations and major
brands
• Organizing within major
open source projects
• First major frameworks
certified
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29. Walk
• Critical mass of
contributors
• Robust trusted tester
program
• Scalable infrastructure
• Limited publicity
• Brand recognition among
practitioners
• Relationships with major
development communities
• Influential libraries or
frameworks certified
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30. Run
• Multiple tiers of
certification
• Mature infrastructure
• Respected brand with
widespread recognition
• Mature following in major
development communities
• Valued statistics
• Measurable impact on
technical debt
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Interested?
How can you contribute?

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Thank you
Claudio Luis Vera
Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd.
claudiovera@rccl.com