Accessibility statements

According to Level Access, one of the leaders in accessibility training, auditing, and consulting:

"An accessibility statement is a public information page that relays your internal organizational policies, your accessibility goals, and your past successes when it comes to serving and working with people who have disabilities."

Accessibility statement examples

From clients

Many of our clients explicitly mention WCAG on their websites, either as an aspirational good or as part of their own accessibility statements and goals.

• AT&T Web Accessibility Statement
• AT&T Universal Design Statement
• CITGO Accessibility Statement
• Chevron Accessibility
• Dell Technologies Accessibility Statement
• Edward Jones Accessibility Statement
• Kohler Accessibility Statement
• Nissan Accessibility Support
• Penn Mutual Accessibility Policy
• Pentair Website Accessibility Statement
• Porsche Accessibility Statement
• Sherwin-Williams Commitment to Accessibility
• Smartsheet Accessibility and 508 Compliance
• Volvo Accessibility

From other companies

• Anheuser-Busch Accessibility
• McDonald's Accessibility Statement
• Walmart Responsible Disclosure and Accessibility Policies

From companies who work in events

Here are some examples of accessibility statements from companies who work in events:

• Cvent Accessibility Statement
• Freeman Accessibility Policies
• Accessibility Features on Eventive

Reasons to have an accessibility statement

There are many, but these three are cited by the World Wide Web Consortium:

• Show users that the organization cares about accessibility and about people with disabilities
• Provide users with information about the accessibility of the site's content
• Demonstrate commitment to accessibility, and to social responsibility

What should go on an accessibility statement?

Accessibility statements should contain at least the following:

• A commitment to accessibility for people with disabilities
• The accessibility standard applied, such as WCAG 2.1 AA or WCAG 2.2 AA
• Contact information in case users encounter problems

What are other good things to put on an accessibility statement?

It is also advisable to include the following information:

• Any known limitations, to avoid frustration of your users
• Measures taken by your organization to ensure accessibility
• Technical prerequisites, such as supported web browsers
• Environments in which the content has been tested to work
• References to applicable national or local laws and policies

What is the state of accessibility at Maritz?

• No unified accessibility policy or process
• No guarantee that web sites adhere to WCAG 2.1 A or WCAG 2.1 AA
• No guarantee that PDFs, MS Word files, PowerPoints, or other documents adhere to WCAG or PDF/UA

If Maritz sites were to have accessibility statements, what would we have to address?

• Input from the legal team
• Avoiding misrepresentations
• Responsibilities
• Current gaps
• Audio descriptions
• PDFs and other documents

What questions do we have for the legal team?

• What would be the process for communicating accessibility-related questions to the legal team?
• What would be the process for the legal team to ask us accessibility-related questions?
• What phrasings should we use on the statement?
• What phrasings should we avoid?

Avoiding misrepresentations

• How do we avoid letting the client think that we are capable of creating a site that conforms to WCAG?
• How do we artfully communicate that the site only conforms to some WCAG Success Criteria and not all of it?

Responsibilities

• What additional responsibilities does each team have to take on?
• How do those responsibilities get spread among team members on each of those teams?
• How do those people get trained on those responsibilities?
• How do we ensure we have people to take care of these responsibilities in case someone is sick, on vacation, etc.?

Current gaps

• What are the things we know we can currently deliver?
• What are the things we know we can't currently deliver?
• How do we fill those gaps?
• How do we get from where we currently are to where we want to be?
• How do we make those aspirations reality?
• How do we not stop the momentum?
• How do we not let our current situation be "good enough"?

How do we record audio descriptions?

• Who records them?
• Does that person need to get recording equipment?
• Would we need to train multiple people on that?
• Do we want the audio descriptions baked into the overall audio track?
• Or do we want them to be on a separate track?
• Or do we want to have a separate video altogether for extended audio descriptions?

PDFs and other documents

• Who is in charge of making sure that the documents produced for these sites conform to WCAG and/or PDF/UA?
• Who is in charge of researching those document-specific standards and criteria?
• Who is in charge of training people who work with PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoints, and other file types?
• What kind of templates do we need to have?
• Who should be building those templates?
• Who is in charge of testing the accessibility of those assets?
• If we don't have an in-house expert on document accessibility, who do we groom to become that in-house expert?
• What types of assistive technologies do we want to use when testing those documents?
• Who needs to have those on their machines?
• Who needs to be trained on how to use those assistive technologies?