Category: Accessible Procurement

This article was contributed by Jeff Kline, the author of Strategic IT Accessibility: Enabling the Organization. Kline is the current Statewide Electronic and Information Resources (EIR) Accessibility Coordinator at the Texas Department of Information Resources and previous EIR Accessibility Coordinator at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Before entering public service, he spent 26 years at IBM, during which he managed its Worldwide Accessibility Consulting and Business Transformation initiatives and several other efforts related to product development, industrial design, software development and system usability.

Creating Web accessibility policy has become a common approach taken by education institutions and others (e.g., local, state, and federal government agencies, and businesses). These organizations want to ensure accessibility for all their constituents (e.g., clients, users and staffs) including those with disabilities. Often this is because organizations see the value in accessibility for (1) ethical, (2) business, or (3) legal reasons. Policy then becomes a mechanism to realize the commitment or obligation the organization has to an accessible Web presence.

Establishing policy provides recognition that system reform does not occur in a vacuum. Moreover, policy assures that access is to be equal across the entire system, rather than at the discretion of individuals within the system. Finally, policy helps align organizational resources to accomplish newly defined priorities. In the case of Web accessibility, it can be a complex issue in part because of the shear size of the problem. Moreover, the presence of a policy can act as a demonstration of a good faith effort to comply with applicable statues (e.g., Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and state laws)….