Belfast Met Case Study
Building organisational change
All Able worked with Belfast met college to deliver an organisation wide programme to improve and embed accessibility good practice across all areas of work. This included website audits, creation of policy and strategy documents, staff training and changes to procurement practices.
Belfast met were not only looking to meet their minimum legal requirements for digital accessibility but were looking to start of a wider digital accessibility journey to support good practice as business as usual.
At the organisation level
Building accessibility as business as usual requires actions across an organisation:
Leadership must direct accessibility culture change
Digital service and product owners must take responsibility for technical compliance
Staff must be upskilled and each play their own part starting off with basic actions and working to eventually deliver inclusive services as standard, such as improving the production of accessible digital content
It can be hard to get buy in from large groups for this kind of organisational change but by showing that change can start with small actions and encouraging enthusiasm from staff, significant improvements can be made across an organisation.
There are several starting actions that a college like Belfast met or other large organisations can deliver in a short time period to kickstart their digital accessibility journey. With recent regulation changes there is always a need for accessibility auditing and to work on the technical accessibility of digital systems. A round of staff training to teach fundamental skills including recordings of the sessions to create an ongoing training resource can help get accessibility on the minds of staff and show that they can participate with very simple starting actions. Finally, identifying key areas to work on with leadership such as updating procurement processes, legal responsibilities and where risk can be reduced can help get buy in for future steps on the journey.
What has changed?
Audits were conducted for all major student and staff systems. All recommendations were accepted, and most have been implemented in the 6 months since audits were conducted.
All Able also delivered training to staff and feedback from this event has been incredibly positive and a noticeable change in staff behaviour.
A full proposal of next steps was presented to leadership teams including support and guidance material to help take these steps. Belfast met have since continued to implement these future recommendations including further engagement over customizing their procurement questioning to work with their regularly used procurement frameworks.
“We are so thankful to All Able who not only delivered exceptional audits but repeatedly met with product owners to discuss findings and provide support. This was potentially a difficult sell but it really helped platform owners buy into the change process.
They continue to support us and are a brilliantly knowledgeable and helpful company to work with.”
– Mary Coffey, Digital Accessibility
What's next?
Belfast will continue to focus on accessibility in procurement to make sure their future digital estate will be inclusive and accessible from the start.
Supporting you at an organisational level
Often the first step to organisational accessibility change is knowing how accessible core systems are, such as your main website and key staff systems.
All Able offer comprehensive auditing services against WCAG 2.1 AA criteria using a wide range of tools to assess compliance levels and identify accessibility issues. All audits include thorough manual testing using a range of assistive technologies and reasonable adjustments, automated testing and expert screen-reader reviews.
Deliverables:
A report detailing WCAG 2.1 AA failures including suggested impact on user groups and possible remediations.
Identification of any public sector regulation impacts on compliance and suggestion of applicable exemptions.
A draft accessibility statement guaranteed to be compliant with public sector regulations.
Follow up review session to discuss findings and remediation with system owners and developers.
On request, VPAT reports to meet your section 508 needs.