Strategies for “Shifting Left” | Webinar & Office Hours

Yes, all right. So yeah, thank you again for joining and we will today, we’re going to be talking about strategies for shifting left. I’m Kelsie, and I’m joined by my colleague Heather to talk about this topic today. So first, what do we mean by shifting left? And on my slide here, I have an image of a project timeline, and it’s a horizontal bar going chronologically from left to right. And this is a really common project or process timeline that we encounter when thinking about digital projects. Or at a lot of folks find themselves in where they start with planning and requirements, then go into design development, testing, launch, and then start thinking about accessibility. And they do things like accessibility review, testing and remediation, and some for a lot of folks, that process is happening pretty late in the project timeline, sometimes at or after launch. So when talking about shifting left we’re literally talking about shifting accessibility left on a timeline. We are talking about addressing accessibility early and throughout the project, which is going to be more effective, more efficient and less expensive than waiting to tackle accessibility until at or near the end of a project or process. So how do we shift left? I like to encourage people to break shifting left down into three parts. Part one is think about what is our accessibility goal? This can range from big goals to specific tasks. Part two, how do we get there and who’s responsible? This is where we take that goal, and we break it down into specific concrete steps, and we identify which team or which individual is going to be in charge of that step. We also want to make those steps part of the definition of Done. The work is not done until the accessibility work is done. And then part three is we want to think about when in the process, do these steps fit and in line with that shift left mentality, usually the earlier the better. Let’s look at an example using image alternatives. This is based on the idea that images and digital content should have a text alternative should have a description so that users who aren’t interacting with the content visually can still get that information from the image. So let’s break it down into three parts. So what is our accessibility goal? All meaningful images on our website have an accurate text alternative. How do we get there? And who’s responsible? This could break down in different ways, and if you’re a small team, you might be the one person in charge of all of these steps, but how this might look is identify meaningful images, and that goes to your designer, write image descriptions. Could go to the copywriter and add image descriptions to the web code. Could go to the Content Manager. And then we want to decide when in this process, does this accessibility work fit? And it might make sense to do all these steps together at once, or to spread them out to different points. So for example, when the design is finalized, when image selection is finalized, or when content is being added to the site. The main thing I want to emphasize here is that all of these steps are happening before launch. They’re happening during that design development and planning stage. And the second example I want to talk about is thinking about that shifting left doesn’t just benefit digital projects, but can also benefit your organization as a whole. So let’s think about recruiting employees with disabilities, and let’s break it down into three parts. First, our accessibility goal, maybe a specific thing we want to accomplish is we want to create an accessible hiring process, and how we get there, some concrete steps we could take are to remove unnecessary physical requirements from job postings, and that might be the role of your human resource officer. You can offer candidates a choice of interview platforms or formats, and that might go to your hiring manager. And another great step to include here would be making sure that job postings and listings are accessible. They’re posted in accessible formats, and then when in the process, does this fit these can these tasks can happen when you’re writing or updating job descriptions, when you’re preparing to interview candidates, or when you’re planning out your hiring process. So we’ve talked about some of the specifics, and I’d like to talk about some of the benefits and impacts of shifting left. Like to pass it off to Heather.

Awesome. Thanks. Kelsey, so yeah, why are we talking about shifting left here in the first place? Who actually benefits from this? So I’m going to start out with a little context and just offer your friendly reminder that everyone benefits from accessibility and shifting left, however, it’s those of us with disabilities, whether internal or external to your business, who are going to benefit the most. In fact, it is mission critical or essential for us to have accessibility, and by shifting left, incorporating it early and often throughout your processes, it’s going to ensure that people with disabilities have equitable access to things like digital information, products, services and opportunity. So with that context, let’s take one of the specific examples that. Kelsey used on how we might take a first step towards shifting left and see if we can identify several different scenarios or different individuals who might benefit directly from that one simple step. So if we think about she mentioned removing exclusionary language from the job postings or descriptions. So the person who might benefit from that is someone with a disability who is able to read your job posting, and because of the inclusive versus exclusionary language, they’re going to be able to feel confident applying for that position, knowing that their physical disability is not going to be or create a barrier to performing the essential job duties. Another person who could benefit external to your organization might be a blind screen reader user who wants to apply for one of those jobs, and if you have taken the steps ahead of time to make sure that your recruiting and hiring platforms and digital assets are accessible, that person’s going to be able to very easily and efficiently navigate those and have a great experience applying for that position, and in turn, give your company access to a deeper talent pool that they can pull from by having that content be accessible another person external to the organization that might benefit. Kelsey mentioned a particular offering a variety of interview options, and being flexible with that, so somebody who might have a physical barrier to coming to an in person interview at your place of business might be able to fully and easily participate in a remote or virtual interview, and so that person is also going to benefit directly. Let’s take a minute now and just look internal to your organization and think about some folks that might be able to benefit from again, this one small step. So for example, we could look at an employee in HR whose job responsibility it is to process all these incoming applications. Maybe there’s somebody who uses keyboard only navigation to interact with their work computer by ensuring that those processes are accessible, this person is going to be able to easily and efficiently perform their job duties. And then also, just from a more global perspective, your business and brand as a whole is going to benefit from shifting left, because you’re establishing establishing yourselves in the business community as a company that is committed to respecting and valuing individuals with disabilities and creating a culture of inclusion for both your employees and your customers. And so just in summary, in terms of thinking about who benefits here and the shifting left process as a whole, let’s think progress over perfection. So as you could see, this one simple step that Kelsey noted as a as a strategy to get started without even really trying. We came up with several different scenarios, both internal, external to your company, where people are going to benefit immensely from this. So I know initially it can feel like a lot to think about shifting all of your processes and digital assets left, however, there is a huge ripple effect for every small step you take, and so each step you take is going to impact innumerable folks along the way, both internal and external to your business,

All right, and I’ll just jump in here to talk about how accessible web can help. So if you are wanting to shift left on digital projects or on organizational processes, there are definitely areas where accessible web can support you. Our web accessibility software can be used not just to scan your published website or but could potentially be used to scan and manage accessibility work on your development site space. We offer accessibility audits, consulting and training, and when you are to the point where you’ve got and consulting and training can be about digital projects or about processes and different considering accessibility in different ways. And we also off can create voluntary product accessibility templates, which are accessibility reports related to your different products or website that are available online. So those are just a few ways that we can help. And again, as a reminder that we will share a discount code for our software at the end of this Q and A time. So with that, we are ready for discussion and are happy to answer any questions about shifting left.