Implications for lack of education and training in industry and the workplace.

Legal backdrop and policy context of DA

Social model of disability - disability rights- nothing about us without us.

Wider movements of UNCRPD - AD - Equality Act.

Legal movements relevant to equality in the digital society - Section 508, Canada, EN 501…, EAA and Uk regulations. Globally this topic is significant. 

Definitions and the guidance backdrop of DA (Universal design, web accessibility and inclusive design).

Architecture, services and digital. Physical, digital spaces and societal needs in all aspects of life. Accessibility permeates through all aspects of society, from the built environment and architecture, through to the design of services and digital content.

In the digital space the legal requirements for the web dominate the discourse, literature and guidance surrounding digital accessibility.

In the workplace, and more specifically the web industry, the lack of digital accessibility awareness and education appears to have implications with an identified ‘assistive technology skills gap’ and demand for these skills in the workplace (PEAT, 2018; WebAIM, 2012; 2018; Teach Access, 2023), as well as a lack of career pathway within the workplace to be able to support the development of these skills (Disability Strategy ref). There is a Lack of education (not going into industry with skills) and hard to address the skills needed once in the workforce (ref).

Without a broad understanding or preparedness for implementing digital accessibility in the workplace, professionals rely on the WCAG guidelines as the gold standard to steer their way. These guidelines were specifically created for web professionals to meet the legal standards now expected of their discipline.

The skills gap and lack of education and training appears to perpetuate the reliance on automated tools to meet these guidelines and adopt a fix it at the end culture. Amplified by the guidance encouraging people to audit websites and then fix content.

It also appears to fuel the perspective of accessibility being perceived as a checklist, rather than the education and understanding of diversity in society and users needs.

Checklists only find 30-50 of issues as automated checking tools inspect underlying code. They don’t take account of human behaviour or nuances and the human testing aspect that is advised but often omitted. This may account for the low progress of accessibility in websites (W3C) and the lack of progress being made to make services accessible for those with disabilities (Hassell Inclusion, 2022; AbilityNet, 2022; 2023; CDDO, 2021).

The fix at the end culture brings with it the expense associated with accessibility further fuelling the perception it is complex, time consuming and expensive fixes.

Building accessibility into the process of design and including those with disabilities in the development testing phase in the long run saves time and money. 

Checklist- one size fits all - universal design assumptions 

Fix at the end - guidance uses this terminology 

Inclusive design - involving people in the process to meet their needs.

WCAG adds kudos as the go-to one size fits all checklist.

Digital Accessibility is multifaceted involving an awareness of disability and user needs, technical know how of the WCAG guidelines and understanding around the legal aspects of equality. Lewthwaite (REF) highlight this in terms of education needing a multidisciplinary approach that covers the three aspects of disability, procedural and technical knowledge. 

Accessibility and progress reports only seem apparent within the web industry, this is likely due to their need to meet the legal standards of the web regulations. There are no (or very few) identified reports specific to the wider remit of everyday progress with digital accessibility practices, such as those performing everyday tasks like creating documents, social media or producing video content to be able to draw any firm conclusions about broader awareness education in the workplace. 

Where document or everyday accessibility is referred to in any form of literature it refers to teachers creating learning resources for their students and highlights either the lack of knowledge surrounding this or staff training????. 

Their experience appears to be one of lack of support, confidence and time and with that difficulties implementing it.

One model mentioned for ‘intensive computing’ Robin Christoperson.