Skip to main content

Accessibility Policy

Having a documented policy about how you want the organisation to handle accessibility might be a useful tool. If your press has more individuals involved, uses external partners more often or doesn't yet have a strong organisational buy in for accessibility, then it might be helpful to set expectations in a formal policy. It is not common for small diamond publishers to have one. Even so, an accessibility policy can help all stakeholders to understand exactly how they support accessibility with their work, and why they should be doing this. An accessibility policy is not the same as an accessibility statement, and is more of an internal document (while statements are public), but it can be shared alongside the statement, or include a lot of the same text.


Some

recommended

things

Examplesto that could be includedinclude in an IT accessibility policy are:

  • A statement on the solutionorganisation's deliverycommitment lifecycle:

    to
      accessibility.
    • The solutionscope deliveryof lifecyclethe mustpolicy, factorto include book files, web pages and submission platforms.
    • A statement that accessibility work is completed by all individuals involved in the organisation and is everybody's role. You could include the named person with overall responsibility for accessibility as well.
    • The legal minimum standards you are working with, and a statement that all book files and the website will have a plan in place to achieve this standard.
    • Your approach to achieving this work, for example, by working closely with authors, procuring third party systems or using the services of external partners.
    • Details of where you are not in control of the accessibility of content i.e. third party providers.
    • How everyone at the organisation will be trained in accessibility.
    • AllHow projectsoften mustyou includeplan to do auditing work to benchmark improvements and progress along the roadmap.
    • Time and budget investments that are planning to be made.
    • How accessibility aswill abe non-functionalevidenced requirement.and checked.
    • AllHow userthe interfaceaccessibility designstatement, mustand conformany other systematic documentation, will be created and kept up to corporatedate.
    • Contact details for feedback and additional accessibility standards.
    • End user testing must include users using AT such as a screen reader.
    • End user support materials must have sections tailored to the needs of users who may need accessibility features.requests.

    More

     information:

    https://accessible.org/how-to-write-accessibility-policy/W3C Developing Organizational Policies on Web Accessibility

    Accessible.org - How to Write an Accessibility Policy

    Examples:

    Oxford Brookes University Accessibility Policy

    University of Reading Digital Accessibility Policy

    BBC Digital Product Accessibility Policy

    Harvard Business Publishing Digital Accessibility Policy

Back to top