Digital accessibility legislation: how aware is your organization?
A colleague comes to your desk with an Excel document containing the swimming pool's opening hours. They ask if you could upload this document to the website. When you explain that you can't upload this document because it's not a PDF, your colleague walks over to the copier. A few minutes later, you receive a PDF with the scanned opening hours. This is actually just an image. Your colleague is unaware that this is not a digitally accessible PDF document and that you cannot post it.
Many web editors will recognize the above situation. Right? How do you ensure that everyone within the organization, from management to your immediate colleagues, is aware of digital accessibility legislation? How do you ensure that there is support for it and that your colleagues know how to apply it? We asked a number of our customers!
Klaas Dolman from the municipality of Gorinchem outlines the following steps for a top-down approach:
Step 1: Ensure support high up in the organization
To raise awareness within the organization, it is essential that there is administrative support for the issue. Klaas: "If you don't have the board on board with this theme, it's like shouting in the desert." The board has an important role to play in putting this issue on the agenda. Then turn it into a project or program within your organization and determine its impact.
Step 2: Include digital accessibility in policy
Define how your organization wants to approach digital accessibility. This could be in the form of a vision for service provision or communication. Then translate this vision into a concrete policy plan to pursue the vision.
Step 3: Ensure knowledge sharing among ambassadors
If employees lack the knowledge to create accessible documents, it is necessary to train them in this area. Communication about this must take place both bottom-up and top-down within the organization. The policy must ensure that more knowledge is brought into the organization, for example by dedicating training courses to this topic. In addition, it is important that all web editors have the right knowledge. This enables them to hold others accountable and ensure that only accessible content and documents are posted on the website. They are, as it were, the ambassadors.
Melvin Claessen from the municipality of Heeze-Leende also indicates that it is important for the web editors to have a supervisory role. They determine what can and cannot be posted on the website and act as gatekeepers. It appears to be difficult to do this without immediately being burdened with all the additional work.
Step 4: Determine impact and get your management in order
Make an inventory of all pages and PDF documents on your main website. Organize this site by determining which documents you still want to make accessible. It is impossible to make everything from the past compliant. Use web analysis tools to make your choices. Is a page or PDF rarely or never used? Then consider removing the document. Siteimprove is a tool that provides you with a wealth of information about the accessibility of pages and PDF documents. Is your municipal website in order? Then continue with any subsites or other websites managed by the municipality. This all sounds logical, but make no mistake. Practice is more difficult than theory. The most important thing is awareness and the documents that are supplied.
Can you use some help?
We are happy to help. At Shift2, we advise local authorities on how to continue striving for accessibility in their online services. Would you like to know more? Feel free to contact us. We would be happy to tell you more.
