Establishing the scope of Accessibility

Creating an Accessibility Strategy Plan

It is important to establish an accessibility strategy plan when a project commences. This will help establish a roadmap so that a fully accessible website or as close as possible can be delivered.

Review expertise and type of content on the site

What is the level of accessibility knowledge and expertise of the staff creating and maintaining the website? Clients might need to be educated and provided resources and tools to improve the situation. If a website is being redeveloped, reviewing the state of various types of content will give an indication how aware and proficient the client is in different aspects of accessibility.

Text

Look at content which staff are responsible for populating themselves such as news posts, learning & resource sections etc… Have headings been used properly as opposed to just bolding text? Has the content been written with best practices for the web? Is link text written properly?

Images

Images on the site need alt text. Review any existing images on the site that will be carried across to the new one. What is the current state of alt tags? Are they good quality or can they be improved? Are staff capable of writing good alt text, is education/training required? For any new images explain that good quality alt text will need to be written. If they are a gallery/museum or heritage organisation with lots of visual content or use charts explain that long descriptions may need to be developed for certain images on the website. For infographics or charts an accessible version or transcript may need to be provided.

Video

Is there any video content on the site? How accessible are current videos? Are there captions, transcripts and audio descriptions?

In order for a website to pass accessibility compliance, videos must have captions, and an alternate so there should be a transcript and audio description. See planning for video content below for more info.

Audio

Is there any audio content on the site? Is there a transcript of the audio provided? In order for the website to pass accessibility guidelines a transcript of any audio will need to be provided. For more info see planning for audio content below.

Assign Responsibilities

Responsibility for delivering accessibility needs to be assigned to specific individuals so that they can incorporate it into their work on a project. Formalising the responsibility helps ensure that they can allocate specific time and educate themselves/receive training.

• Website Content Authors – Make someone on the client side responsible for alt text, commissioning accessible video etc… If the client does not have buy-in it won’t end up being accessible. Different people may be in charge of content on different parts of the site. For example the people in charge of statistics would need to be aware that they must make their charts accessible and provide transcripts etc…

Planning for Video Content

Most websites contain at least a few videos. If there is video on the site, there needs to be a plan to make it accessible. Most videos fail accessibility. Many lack captions, almost all lack audio descriptions, and the video players themselves sometimes don’t meet requirements.

What accessibility features you provide with your videos will be influenced by:

• user needs and business benefits
• governmental regulations and other policy requirements
• budget, time constraints, company resources

Prioritise videos that are on important pages on the site or will get the most views. If there is a video on the homepage start with that.

Video accessibility problems persist because no one typically takes the responsibility to make them accessible. Video content is often conceived or developed at a different time or by an external team than most other content.

We recommend teams start by planning for captioning. Captions and transcripts use the same text. Once you have one, it’s fairly easy to develop the other.

Example workflow for creating accessible video

1. Address accessibility in video content as the video is planned and produced.
   By: Script writers, videographers, producers, and others.
2. Develop a described version of the video at the same time as the main video, if needed.
   By: Usually the same people who produce the main video also produce the described version.
3. Develop captions for the main video and for the described version.
   By: Usually if the video is professionally produced, the producers provide captions. Sometimes when informal videos are developed in-house, captions are outsourced.
4. Develop a descriptive transcript using the text from the caption files.
   By: Often transcripts are developed in-house from caption files.
5. Implement it in an accessible media player (usually an existing player with good accessibility support)
   By: Usually in-house web developers.

More information about planning for video accessibility

Planning for Audio Content

Sometimes websites contain audio only content such as podcasts. If there is audio on the site there needs to be a text transcript for people who are deaf. This also benefits other users such as people who are in loud environments and can’t listen. A text transcript of the audio will also improve SEO.

Planning for Image Content

Having good imagery that truly serves the purpose of the content can actually improve the overall accessibility of a site. However, there needs to be a plan to make sure that they are accessible.

• A client will need to know how to write good alt text.
• A long description is needed when an image is too complex to describe in short alt text, for example if it is a chart, graph, or infographic. A long description should provide all the information available through the complex graphic, but in text form. This needs to be accommodated in the visual design of the site and also the backend.
• Find alt description guidelines for various types of specific images such as maps, charts and graphs at Specific Image Description Guidelines.