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.
2. Available 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.
3. 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.
4. Required Capacity and Budget: It is possible to estimate, using current workflows, how much time remediation would take, how much additional time making book born accessible would take, and also how much additional money this would require.
5. ReaderCommunity VoiceRequirements: Alongside the results of baseline auditing, and an assessment of available resources, are you able to include the requirements of the community you serve?serve, as the 'reader voice'? You might have existing accessibility requests from end users to take into account, or you might decide to survey them, and it's possible there are some community or discipline specific considerations to include as well.
6. Policy: Would the accessibility goals identified from auditing, analysing resources and assessing user requirements be best captured in an overarching accessibility policy? You might decide it is better placed in updated author guidelines or other technical documents.
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. Organisational Knowledge: Plan technical and cultural accessibility training and support staff to develop skills. 
9. Public Statements: Publish accessibility statements and roadmaps on the organisation's website, and include VPATs and policies if 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/