ACP Services: Web Accessibility Assessments
Web Accessibility: Typical Engagement
A typical engagement for web content accessibility compliance involves an initial
assessment plus different levels of support. After creating a Statement of Work
and awarding the contract, the first step involves an initial evaluation and report
that typically is completed within 30-45 days after contract award. Most customers
find that the straightforward recommendations in this evaluation and report will
eliminate over 90% of the accessibility problems for a website. After this initial
evaluation and report, most customers request various combinations of training,
strategic management, help desk support, or independent testing—which varies
depending on the type and complexity of the customer’s website, the size and
nature of the customer’s web development team, the customer’s web deployment
technologies, and the key business drivers. A HiSoftware sales representative can
help guide you to the most cost-effective solution for your needs.
Defining Scope of Work
We spend as much time as necessary trying
to understand the scope of our customer’s requirements and to define the scope
of work. This is important for making sure that our customers get the attention
they need while being as cost-effective as possible.
Defining the Assessment Scope
Every customer finds such value in the initial
assessment that we define its scope separately and based on each unique customer
requirements. Most customers, however, ask us to test strategic transactional pages/paths,
main product landing pages, main page templates, specific client “use-case”
scenarios etc. If much of the customer’s content is delivered through page
templates or a content management system (CMS), then we typically test a representative
sampling instead of all pages. We also work with the customer to then define the
Compliance/Quality Rules they want applied to those pages. We can work with an almost
infinite combination of standards, but most clients typically choose the Section
508 standards and WCAG accessibility guidelines. The initial assessment can also
include web privacy, site quality or site inventory rules, along with any customized
rules to further add business value to the initial assessment (many customers find
these additions to help justify their business case with budgeting and contracting
staff). In addition, many customers request a manual review of many of their web
pages using assistive technology (AT) to assess the real impact on end-users with
disabilities.
Defining the Scope of Other Products and Services
We also spent time understanding
our customer’s requirements for product subscriptions, training, help desk
support, and other services. These products and services usually begin immediately
after the initial assessment. In addition to helping our customers “become
compliant” as quickly as possible, our customers find that adding these services
early helps reduce the overall price of our products and services as we can offer
discounts through bundling.
Statement of Work
Once the project scope has been defined, we
provide the client with a Statement of Work clearly defining the deliverables of
the Assessment, the estimated time for completing this work, and the price. The
price of a Web Assessment is based on the amount of hours it will take to perform
the tests, document the findings, build the Assessment Reports and review with the
customer. In addition, the Statement of Work will include the cost of other products
and services bundled with the Assessment, together with a description of the discounts
offered.
Performance of Assessment
For Accessibility Assessments, this
can include both Standards testing (508/WCAG 1.0/WCAG 2.0) using the HiSoftware
Compliance Sheriff web-based Solution, screen-reader testing using JAWS or WindowEyes,
as well as all the manual testing to cover the “visual checkpoints”
within the standards.
Assessment Report
The Assessment Deliverable usually takes the
form of a high-level PowerPoint Overview of the major issues, specific examples
identified that have accessibility problems and code-repair examples to fix these
issues. Customers also receive a private link into the Compliance Sheriff portal
that validated all the 508/WCAG Standards Reporting in order to see the page-level
data and lines of code that triggered the failures/warnings. If requested, we will
include a report of AT User Report for the usability issues found from the JAWS
or WindowEyes testing. If included in the Statement of Work, this report can also
include a general usability assessment from testing by a blind user.
Review of Assessment Report
We then set up either an on-site
or web-demo/conference-call to review the report and findings. We want to ensure
we provide the proper knowledge transfer to the customer for all the issues found
in the Assessment and provide a recommendation for resolving all issues.
Additional Products and Deliverables
As noted above, most of
our customers find that making the straightforward corrections identified in the
Initial Assessment eliminates over 90% of their accessibility problems. Unfortunately,
web content is constantly changing and may quickly become inaccessible. To avoid
this loss of value, most of our customers find that our products and services help
them be proactive and stay accessible. After the first year, most customers discover
the services component decreases significantly as they develop in-house expertise,
mature processes, and a “culture of accessibility.”
The HiSoftware team includes some of most respected IT and policy professionals
in the accessibility field. If your product group is interested in learning more
about HiSoftware’s Web Accessibility Assessment services call us today.