04 Strategic Planning for Accessibility


Models, Frameworks and Charters

AbilityNet Digital Accessibility Maturity Model (DAMM)

This functions as a 7 step management tool to help leverage all capacity at an organisation to map existing accessibility, devise roadmaps and check in on progress. This model has 5 “dimensions” that are seen as parts of an overall strategy: vision, leadership, processes, capability and procurement, and 5 levels of achievement in each. The free downloadable version of the model includes a list of suggested questions to ask when consulting with stakeholders. 

AbilityNet HE and FE Accessibility Maturity Model

The HE and FE maturity model enables you to judge the maturity of your whole organisation's digital accessibility. This again has 7 sections with sets of questions with levels of 'agreement' as a response, which are then automatically scored to give you an overall rating of Bronze Silver or Gold. This interactive resource helps you:

W3C Accessibility Maturity Model (draft)

This describes 7 “dimensions” where accessibility applies including communications, ICT development lifecycles and the organisational culture, along with suggestions in each dimension of points (or organisational functions) where accessibility can be evidenced, as well as varying levels of achievement in each point. This practical and customisable guidance, with a structure for co-ordinating evidence, is the most helpful method of presenting information to busy, praxis based professionals.

Accessible Books Consortium Charter for Accessible Publishing

Our objective is to make our e-books accessible to all. With this objective in mind, we, the signatories to this Charter, hereby commit to:

  1. stating our accessibility policy on our web-site, including adherence to this Charter;
  2. nominating a senior manager who will be responsible for accessibility;
  3. raising awareness among, and provide technical training for, relevant staff;
  4. designating and publicising a point of contact in our organization to assist persons with print disabilities to access our publications;
  5. testing our digital publications for accessibility, incorporating appropriate feature descriptions and metadata;
  6. monitoring our progress in this area;
  7. promoting the adoption of accessibility standards throughout the supply chain; and
  8. supporting national and international collaboration with organisations representing persons with print disabilities so as to increase the availability of publications in accessible formats.

Contact us if you wish to become a signatory to the Charter for Accessible Publishing.

Publishing Accessibility Action Group Accessible Publishing Charter

Our objective is to make all content accessible and to embed accessible practices throughout the publishing ecosystem. Every aspect of the publishing industry is integral to our mission, and we encourage you to consider signing the PAAG Charter for Accessible Publishing to show your commitment to this objective. You can join either as a publisher or as a publishing ally. Join our impressive group of signatories and show your support for this important declaration.

With this in mind, we, the signatories to this charter, hereby commit to:

  1. raising awareness among, and providing training for, relevant staff.
  2. nominating a company “accessibility champion” who can bring together key stakeholders to discuss potential accessibility improvements and act as a liaison for all accessibility information.
  3. publishing our accessibility policy on our website, including our commitment to this Charter.
  4. designating and publicising a point of contact in our organisation to assist persons with disabilities to access alternate formats of our content.
  5. partnering with national and international organisations that provide support for the availability of publications in accessible formats.
  6. incorporating appropriate accessibility features within our digital publications and platforms, according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and other appropriate accessibility standards.
  7. advocating for accessibility standards and collaboration throughout the publishing supply chain from author to reader.
  8. utilising the accessibility metadata opportunities available to aid with the discovery of accessible content.
  9. testing and validating content to ensure it is usable by people with print disabilities. Ideally this would include testing by persons with lived experience.
  10. monitoring our progress in this area and regularly assessing the accessibility of our digital publications and platforms.

If you wish to become a signatory to the Charter for Accessible Publishing, please complete this declaration. 

Even UP: A UK and Irish University Presses Commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity

UK and Irish university presses are committed to equity, diversity and inclusivity in our workplaces, in who we work with and in what we publish.  Recognising that different presses and parent institutions have their own EDI initiatives but eager to collaborate in order to amplify them, we undertake to:

  1. Share best practice for EDI across presses.
  2. Commit to using either the AUPresses survey tool to collect demographic data, or our own surveys of comparable quality, in order to assess and understand areas in which we can improve, benchmarking across presses where appropriate.
  3. Create and share a programme of training and events, such as guest speakers, webinars, online symposia.
  4. Promote and demonstrate transparency and equal opportunity in recruitment and career progression processes in university presses, including:
    • paid internships,
    • listing salaries/salary bands on all entry level roles and on all recruitment advertising, subject to commercial or confidentiality requirements,
    • inter-press career mentorship for colleagues from under-represented groups.
  5. Work together to raise awareness of career opportunities in our presses with groups that are currently underrepresented in scholarly publishing.
  6. Have a designated lead for equality, diversity and inclusivity in our organisations and have those leads meet regularly.

Assess Your Section 508 Program Maturity

For the US only, there is a framework available to assess your organisational maturity within Section508 legislative requirements. This assesses for 4 criteria levels: Ad Hoc, Planned, Resourced and Measured, and covers 5 domains: Acquisition, Agency technology life cycles, Testing and Validation, Complaint Management and Training. It also includes a basic and advanced checklist.

The Open Accessibility Strategic Planning Model '10 Steps to Creating Custom Accessibility Roadmaps'

Considering what your accessibility goals are, and forming a plan or roadmap to achieve them, is an important part of accessibility work. Our strategic planning model features 10 steps split into 4 sections to help you devise a plan that works for your small press. The model featuring the information on this page is available to download in spreadsheet format from: The Open Book Futures Accessibility Tools, but in addition to this, there is some extra guidance and resource links available here within Copim Compass.

A Preparation

1. Accountability: Appoint a person to co-ordinate accessibility, who could be a dedicated accessibility professional or someone who has a wider portfolio of work that includes accessibility too. However, it's also important to remember that some accessibility work will be completed by almost everyone at an organisation.

2. Training: Plan technical digital accessibility training and support the identified staff to develop skills. 

3. Identify Objectives: Once relevant staff have been identified and trained, some organisational accessibility objectives can be devised through requirements gathering exercises. Any organisation should aim to meet legal minimum requirements, but it's possible to be exempt from that (this requires work to evidence), and you may decide to go beyond in some areas if it fits with your organisational values. Also, your readership might already have made accessibility requests you haven't been able to meet yet, or you could survey your end users to capture this 'reader voice' in terms of accessibility requirements. Finally, it's possible there are some community or discipline specific considerations to include as well.

B Analysis and Auditing

4. Baseline Auditing: Audit the current accessibility of all aspects of the organisation, including the frontlist and backlist book files, the website functionality and the backend submission platform. You could complete this yourself using self auditing, or employ an external auditor. You could also look at assessing current organisational knowledge, attitudes towards and motivations for engaging with accessibility work.

5. Available and Required Capacity and Budget: Improving accessibility requires dedicated time and money, and a full consideration of where this can be diverted to accessibility goals will help with planning. It is likely that you will have some idea of how long book production tasks take, and how much extra work accessibility improvements will add to that, but it could be that you will need to understand more about the relative simplicity or complexity of individual accessibility requirements (like ALT text, or checking colour contrast).

C Implementation

6. Documentation: Capturing the results of identifying objectives, auditing, and analysing resources might happen across a range of documentation that could include: an accessibility policy, roadmaps, strategic plans, updated author guidelines, or other documentation.

7. Plan Work: We recommend that frontlist and backlist/remediation are considered separately, and separate plans for the website including the backend submission process. 

8. Public Statements: Publish accessibility statements and roadmaps on the organisation's website, and include VPATs and public policies if that is decided on.

D Improvements and Benchmarking

9. Improvements: Incorporate planned accessibility improvements into workflows and complete the plan.

10. Benchmark Auditing: Audit the accessibility and organisational knowledge at regular intervals within the plan to showcase improvements. 

More advice on creating accessibility roadmaps: 

UK Government Digital Service: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/agile-delivery/developing-a-roadmap

US Section 508: https://www.section508.gov/manage/playbooks/technology-accessibility-playbook-intro/play03/