It’s time for your Accessibility Statement

The part that most people think of is the monitoring agency in each member state that will carry out audits to check compliance. This is the top-down perspective, but should not (only) be seen as “policing”, as the governments also have a responsibility to promote and facilitate training to organizations covered by the directive. Although it may feel scary to be controlled, the goal is not to punish, but to support and improve. So, the discussion should be about the chance to be controlled - not the risk.

There is also the possibility for users to provide feedback, which can be seen as a kind of perpetually ongoing reality check. Of course, it can be embarrassing when visitors discover errors (they do, of course, on our website as well), but it's fantastic that individuals take the time to describe an error - because then we have a chance to correct it. “Feedback is a gift” sounds like a silly marketing slogan, but it's actually true. If you do not know that your website has a problem, you can hardly solve it, so clear and constructive criticism is actually kind of a gift. Consider it free consultation!

The third part is that everyone covered by the directive must declare their accessibility status. By requiring the website owner to publish information about possible shortcomings in the interface, the directive forces the person or team responsible for the digital channel to know how accessible it is. Accessibility is no longer possible to ignore - each organization must find out how accessible the website or document is. It may feel overwhelming at first, but as soon as you have set up internal processes for how requirements, testing and control are to be performed, the documentation itself becomes an important success factor. Suddenly there is an opportunity to prioritize, plan, implement and follow up. The accessibility work becomes concrete and the goal is clear when you can tick off another fixed deficiency.

This work will not only result in an accessibility statement, but can be the start of a journey that through increased awareness leads to a higher level of accessibility.

The statement itself must be "detailed, comprehensive and clear", which is easier said than done. Keep in mind that the statement has two target groups: the visitors to your website and the monitoring agency. Both are of course important, but visitors, who can be many, may need to receive information about accessibility every time it or the website's content changes. The monitoring agency will only check the accessibility statement on occasion; if your interface has been selected for monitoring or if someone has made a complaint.

In other words, it will more often be visitors than the monitoring agency who read your statement. Therefore, it is important to present the accessibility status in a way that as many people as possible can understand. Detailed technical information about which success criteria may not be met, is better presented separately. You can also link to a report that describes the level of accessibility from a legal perspective.

There are recommendations on describing accessibility fails based on the functional performance statements of the EN301549 and the directive's implementation acts. We think this is problematic in several ways. For example, there is a lot of overlap where lack of accessibility affects several groups. Then the same fail must be reported several times, which becomes difficult to overview and entails unnecessary work. This approach also means that the website owner and the user must define the functional performance in the same way, which places very high demands on the website owners detailed knowledge of the topic. Furthermore, individuals may find themselves in different user groups depending on context and situation. And not many people appreciate being told what they need.

Significantly better from a user perspective is to point out WHERE the user may encounter problems. What part of the website, or what type of content, does not meet the requirements - and in what way? This helps users who avoid frustrating inaccessibility and let them ask for alternative formats instead.

Only months until your website needs to be accessible!