Digital Accessibility Experts

Today, your thinking about accessibility needs to go way beyond the web and apps.

People in every organisation in the world are creating emails, Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents every day and saving and sharing these as PDFs with colleagues and customers.

These need to accessible too.

Here we discuss how to make all these different types of document accessible. We cover

• What you need to meet WCAG for documents, and why sometimes you need to go beyond WCAG
• How to shift people’s mindsets to spend time in improving document accessibility
• How to embed accessibility in document templates to speed up what you need to do to make documents accessible
• What document accessibility checking tools are available for free
• How to create strategies to assure document accessibility is scalable for large organisations
• What do you do about legacy documents – do you have to make things you’ve already published accessible

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/creating-accessible-documents/

Access it for free by registering on HiHub (https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/) will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

Accessibility Statements are often used by organisations as an alternative to making their websites accessible. However, they were originally created to help improve the communication between organisations and users of their websites or apps who have disabilities.

In this webinar, Jonathan Hassell, who wrote the initial guidance for accessibility statements in BS 8878, discusses what statements are for, who they are for, why the rules for writing them differ in different countries, and how best to write them to mitigate legal and regulatory threats.

He also clarifies the differences and similarities between them and VPATs and Accessibility Conformance Reports for B2B communications, where vendors are trying to sell the accessibility conformance and features of a digital tool or SAAS. Finally, he discusses how documenting your digital product or service’s accessibility functionality may be mandated by the European Accessibility Act, and can help you promote the results of your accessibility work to people with disabilities, to bring you a Return on Investment from it.

If you’d like to talk with us about how we could help you write or improve your Accessibility Statement or Accessibility Conformance Report, please get in touch.

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/mastering-accessibility-statements-acrs-vpats-documentation-metadata/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

In recent years the term ‘vulnerability’ has become increasingly used in regulated industries like banking and utilities.

Many people can have characteristics of vulnerability – due to poor health, disability, neurodiversity, anxiety, ageing or a mental health condition, a life event such as a new caring responsibility, or low resilience to financial shocks such as the cost of living crisis.

Everyone needs digital information provided about products and services to be easy to understand, and customer-service lines to understand their specific needs. The link between vulnerability and accessibility is clear. 

But, if you want to enable people who are vulnerable to use your digital tools and services, you’ll have to go beyond WCAG, which misses many of the things people who are neurodivergent, ageing, or have mental health conditions or anxiety need.

In this webinar, Jonathan Hassell discusses what accessibility experts can learn from their colleagues who focus on vulnerability, how vulnerability without accessibility misses a key audience, and how accessibility and vulnerability professionals can gain from working together to better meet the needs of all.

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/what-makes-a-customer-vulnerable-and-how-to-support-them/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

We spend a lot of time helping organisations plan for improving accessibility, getting their key stakeholders on board, securing budget, and helping them develop Accessibility Centres of Excellence to drive consistent accessibility delivery.

But as you do this where you work, once you’ve achieved some of these milestones, how can you ensure your improved accessibility credentials are communicated as a benefit to your organisation, internally and externally?

In the last few years, we’ve seen (and driven) a rise in the recognition that accessibility is receiving publicly, in the Press and Awards.

So, in this session, we discuss how your organisation can get a piece of this growing interest in how organisations are delivering accessibility, and why communicating about the accessibility work you do could be as important as the work itself.

• Why communicating your accessibility wins is essential to attract users to use your website, app or tool
• Why it’s also essential for gaining continued buy-in from your internal stakeholders, and to encourage your team
• How to create an accessibility comms strategy and plan, leveraging opportunities like GAAD
• Hints and tips on how to enter and win awards for accessibility – the key way to gain external recognition for your work

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/communicating-accessibility-successes/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

In Europe, the European Accessibility Act’s deadline of June 28 2025 to make websites, apps and digital products from public and private sector organisations compliant with accessibility guidelines is just over a year away.

In the USA, the DOJ NPRM about accessible websites of state and local governments, and Mandate M-24-08 to Strengthen Digital Accessibility and the Management of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, will have an impact on public sector organisations and SAAS companies and digital agencies who sell services and products to them.

These new legal instruments are having a huge impact on why organisations should invest in accessibility in 2024 and onwards. Yet many organisations are unclear of what they mean. This webinar goes through the legislation to give you an understanding of:

• If the legislation applies to your organisation; and what you need to do by when, if the legislation does apply – this information has been welcomed and discussed with legal teams in many of our clients; and
• Gives pointers on how to plan to efficiently achieve what you need to do before the deadline that applies to your organisation.

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/how-to-meet-the-european-accessibility-act-deadline-or-respond-to-the-us-doj-notice-of-proposed-rule-making-v2/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

Baby Boomers are the wealthiest generation on the planet. The over-70s are the UK’s most online adults after twentysomethings, with considerable spending power.

But rarely do people talk about the digital needs of the ageing population, and the link between these and accessibility. In this webinar, we discussed why organisations should care about serving ageing customers, what older people want from digital, and what you can do to attract and retain this often ignored and undervalued digital audience.

This podcast draws from our recent research report ‘A golden opportunity – Are you serving the needs of older online consumers?’ which you can now download. The research reveals that:

• 81% of over-65s are frustrated by inaccessible websites and apps.
• 70% say retailers fail to consider age-related impairments such as poor eyesight and reduced fine motor skills that make using websites and apps more challenging.
• Older consumers spend an average of £163 per month online.
• But, more than one in 10 over-65s (equivalent to 1.38 million UK consumers*) said they would spend more online if websites and apps were easier for them to use.

We go deeper into all of these and more in the webinar. We hope you enjoy the recording…

You can download the report for free here https://www.hassellinclusion.com/are-you-serving-the-needs-of-older-online-customers/

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/how-to-meet-the-digital-needs-of-the-wealthiest-generation-on-the-planet/ 

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

2023 was a big year for accessibility, with more and more companies committing to get accessibility right, WCAG 2.2 slightly moving the goalposts, and different AIs proving useful tools for accessibility or total red-herrings.

In this essential webinar, our CEO Jonathan Hassell looks back at what we learned about what works in accessibility in 2023, and how we believe new technologies, devices, laws and regulations will impact the next 12 months. 

Here’s a flavour of some of the topics covered:

• How accessibility can help you support the needs of vulnerable and ageing audiences – which are hot for 2024
• How the European Accessibility Act and the DOJ NPRM are making private companies engage more with accessibility in Europe and the USA
• Why accessibility is now essential for SAAS vendors and their clients
• How AI, kiosks and EVs are influencing how you need to think about accessibility in user interfaces
• Why the most important new assistive technologies could be to interface with real-world experiences, not websites
• Which roles in an Accessibility Centre of Excellence are the safest from AI “stealing your job”

This comprehensive guide to all things accessibility in 2024 will get you thinking and provides plenty of inspiration for where we all may be heading…

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/what-you-need-to-know-about-trends-in-digital-accessibility-for-2024/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

For your convenience, once you’ve logged into HiHub, alongside the captioned video and transcript you can download an RTF document containing all the links in the webinar so you can dive deeper into some of the articles we believe are most important this year.

If you want to deliver brilliant, accessible products and services, you need to know that you can rely on your development team to deliver their part of accessibility.

In this webinar, we explore how you can ensure that your developers have the right capability to deliver accessibility in the sorts of products you’re asking them to develop in 2023.

In this practical and insightful session, find out how to identify any gaps in knowledge (solid accessibility knowledge can’t be learned just via free videos). Know what proper accessibility training for Web Developers looks like, and why a little bit of ARIA knowledge can be dangerous.

And see what it’s really like to use assistive technologies like screen readers and speech recognition.

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/how-to-build-strong-development-capability-in-accessibility/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

How do you approach accessibility when you’re a multi-national organisation? While the objectives and the desire to achieve them are often the same globally, many local factors need to be considered. 

In this webinar Jonathan Hassell and Peter Bricknell tackle how to meet the challenges of different laws and regulations in different countries, and how they require different things for customers or staff and different types of digital techs.

They look at how to balance central objectives with local sensitivities and cultures, and how to be agile in the field whilst maintaining global consistency.

Having worked with many large multi-nationals headquartered in many different countries, they share key considerations like prioritisation and scaling, alongside opportunities, and threats to be aware of as you navigate your way to global accessibility.

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/the-pros-cons-of-outsourcing-accessibility/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.

The new version of WCAG 2.2 was launched in October 2023.

We’ve been getting lots of questions about it from across our clients and the accessibility community.

So this massively popular webinar discusses everything you need to know. We covered the practical things: What are the changes WCAG 2.2 brings? What do they mean for you and your users? What should you do about it? We also discussed where WCAG 2.2 sits in the context of accessibility guideline changes: Who are the changes meant to help? Is this enough for full inclusion now, or are guidelines for the needs of some people with disabilities still missing? What’s coming next and when? (WCAG 3.0)

The webinar summarises what’s new, demonstrates how you could code and test for 2 of the new Success Criteria, and discusses how WCAG 2.2’s launch should impact your accessibility strategy.

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

You can access the video recording of the webinar, and its transcript, here: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/the-pros-cons-of-outsourcing-accessibility/

Access it through HiHub. Registering on HiHub will also give you access to recordings of all our past webinars, and keep you updated on upcoming webinars.