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Creating custom accessibility roadmaps and goals

Considering what your accessibility goals are, and forming a plan or roadmap to achieve them, is an important part of accessibility work. Below are a suggested list of actions, or sections, to the plan to help you devise a plan that works for your publishing organisation.

  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.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 and culturaldigital accessibility training and support relevantthe identified staff to develop skills. 
  3. Identify Objectives: AlongsideOnce therelevant resultsstaff ofhave baselinebeen auditingidentified and meetingtrained, 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 anyou assessmentmay ofdecide availableto resources,go arebeyond 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 includemeet theyet, requirements of the communityor you serve,could assurvey the 'reader voice'? You might have existing accessibility requests fromyour end users to takecapture intothis account,'reader orvoice' youin mightterms decideof toaccessibility surveyrequirements. them, andFinally, it's possible there are some community or discipline specific considerations to include as well.
  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.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. NOTES: can use custom checklist  to help plan this, how complicated are they and quantify it in time/money
  6. Required Capacity and Budget: It is possiblelikely tothat estimate,you usingwill currenthave workflows,some idea of how long book production tasks take, and how much timeextra remediationwork wouldaccessibility take,improvements howwill muchadd additionalto timethat, makingbut bookit borncould accessiblebe wouldthat take,you andwill alsoneed howto muchunderstand additionalmore moneyabout thisthe wouldrelative require.simplicity or complexity of individual accessibility requirements (like ALT text, or checking colour contrast).
  7. Documentation: WouldCapturing the accessibilityresults goalsof identifiedidentifying fromobjectives, auditing, and analysing resources andmight assessinghappen useracross requirementsa berange bestof captureddocumentation inthat could include: an overarching accessibility policy?policy, Youroadmaps, mightstrategic decide it is better placed inplans, updated author guidelinesguidelines, or other technical documents. ALSO: strategic plandocumentation.
  8. Plan Work: We recommend that frontlist and backlist/remediation are considered separately, and separate plans for the website including the backend submission process. 
  9. Public Statements: Publish accessibility statements and roadmaps on the organisation's website, and include VPATs and public policies if that is decided on.
  10. Complete Work: Incorporate accessibility into workflows and complete the plan.
  11. 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/

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