The workspace of the future isn’t the office anymore. It is now independent of the physical place. Technology is now where the work lives. It is about the shared digital environment comprising of:
- Collaboration and communication tools
- Platforms that employees use that may be specific to their work — For example, if you are in sales and are using a CRM platform
In the last year, organizations are re-thinking how they use technology, how they procure technology, the type of technology they procure?
The question to ask is what is the Accessibility Readiness of your digital technologies?
Here is a roadmap of where to start:
- Take Inventory — A good place to start is knowing what are the different tools and technologies being used, the number of users, the frequency of use, the criticality of a tool, which technology is it in, whether the code base is the organization or is it a managed service, whether Accessibility has been implemented or not?
- Define the Accessibility Goal — Decide what you would like to achieve Accessibility goal as an organization. Create a plan based on the criticality and priority of the use case of technology.
- Identify the Accessibility Readiness — conduct accessibility audits to understand where you stand. Based on your Accessibility goals, devise implementation strategies. Train the teams so that they can achieve the goals.
- Procurement strategy — Don’t wait, look at all the technology that is currently being procured. Put in a procurement strategy to buy accessible. Bring Accessibility to the forefront rather than as an afterthought.
- Implement Accessibility — Whether with internal teams or vendor teams ensure that they implement accessibility. Bring in strategies to bring transparency to this process so leadership can see the progress on accessibility goals. Verify the accessibility implementation with third-party auditors and employees.
Accessibility is a journey, it isn’t a one-time process. Above all, remember to include the accessibility readiness of all digital technologies as a part of your process.
Have any questions, reach out to talk about how BarrierBreak can support you to put in the Accessibility Readiness processes in your organization.