In 2023 many organisations are getting serious about accessibility. After public commitments from senior leaders, they often recruit someone to create an Accessibility Centre of Excellence (ACE) to embed accessibility throughout the organisation.

This makes perfect sense. However, the skills needed to be an Accessibility Strategist and Leader are different from those needed to be an Accessibility Specialist.

We’ve helped many Heads of Accessibility make this transition, from testing for accessibility and fixing it in products, to working with teams all over the company to embed motivation and structured delivery of accessibility in all the work they do. In this webinar, we share things we’ve learned as we’ve helped organisations like ServiceNow and HSBC develop and invest in their ACE.

We look at the process of initiating and optimising an ACE all the way through, from getting buy-in, funding, and momentum, benchmarking and building a plan, building accessibility into team capabilities and processes, and reporting on its return on investment on stakeholders, following the blueprint in ISO 30071-1 which our CEO wrote.

Whether you’re new to building your ACE or want to take an established one to the next level, this hour will help you make and accelerate your plans.


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/whats-the-best-way-of-getting-to-accessibility-compliance-in-2023/.

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.

Almost all organisations want to improve their accessibility.

But what should be their aim: WCAG 2.0 AA, WCAG 2.1 AA, people with disabilities being able to use their site/app/campaign? And what’s the best way of testing if you got there: getting a tool to automate accessibility testing, getting a WCAG audit, doing one of our Live Audits, asking your usability testers to include people with disabilities in their testing, training your people to audit things themselves?

And how do all of these impact the most important thing – fixing the issues you find, not just doing the testing?

In this webinar, Yacoob Woozeer and Jonathan Hassell talk through what might be best for your organisation, depending on its size, budgets, existing practices, and what your aim is.

Find out how to make sure the time and money you spend on accessibility really benefits you, including:

• What the right compliance goal could be for you – it’s not always WCAG 2.1 AA, especially if you want to get the most financial return from your accessibility efforts.
• What types of accessibility testing might give you the best cost-benefits for your size and type of website or app?
• How training your own QA testers to include accessibility checks in their testing can save you huge time and cost in fixing
• How integrating people with disabilities in your existing usability testing can bring you great accessibility insights for little extra cost
• How talking with your auditor can ensure fixes they suggest are suitable for your ways of working, and so get things fixed quickly
• How fixing the accessibility skills of your teams, could be as important as fixing the accessibility of your products, and how to do both together

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/whats-the-best-way-of-getting-to-accessibility-compliance-in-2023/.

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.

Diversity & Inclusion strategies often neglect a focus on accessibility as a way of delivering inclusion for staff with disabilities.

Accessibility strategies often neglect a focus on staff, concentrating just on customers with disabilities.

People in each of the two disciplines often miss their common aims, by not doing enough to understand each other.

Our CEO Jonathan Hassell is joined by Diversity & Inclusion expert Toby Mildon, to explore the overlap between D&I and accessibility and show how together they can help drive a cohesive inclusion strategy.

Jonathan and Toby have worked together frequently over the years. In this webinar each share what they have learned from the other that has shaped the way they approach their jobs. They discuss what the disciplines have in common, the language of D&I, and where accessibility and D&I can support and help each other.

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/exploring-the-intersection-between-di-and-digital-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.

Neurodiversity is a hot topic right now.

Organisations are looking to hire people who are autistic & dyslexic because of the diversity of thinking they can bring to their workforce. But how do you make sure your organisation is set up to be able to recruit neurodiverse people and enable them to thrive in your working culture, especially when it comes to your digital communications, tools, and meeting practices?

Unfortunately, the needs of neurodiverse people are not well represented in the technical standards for delivering accessibility in websites and apps – the WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Here you can listen to Jonathan Hassell as he shares the research and key learnings from research done with the National Autistic Society to deliver ‘the missing neurodiversity guidelines’ for the digital world.

He shares what the guidelines could bring for your organisation – how can they improve your recruitment and onboarding processes, the tools your staff use, your internal communications, and how your external websites and apps connect with more of your 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/accessibility-neurodiversity/.

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 this webinar, our consultant, Peter Bricknell welcomed 4 guests (both buyers and vendors of SaaS) to talk about why accessibility is essential to their procurement and sales in 2023:

• Lisa Harper, Senior Digital Governance Manager at HSBC,
• Suraj Kika, CEO and Founder at Jadu,
• Eamon McErlean, VP of Accessibility at ServiceNow,
• Denise Wood, Digital Accessibility Lead at PWC.

Listen to them talk about their experiences and answer questions like why they care about accessibility (what’s the size of the prize for them); how to ensure SAAS accessibility documentation is trustworthy; how buyers and vendors can best work together to deliver 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/accessibility-in-software-as-a-service-saas-why-its-essential-for-buyers-and-vendors/

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.

This is an audio recording of a fast-paced webinar, where CEO Jonathan Hassell answered 30 strategic and technical accessibility questions asked by our webinar audience.

So whether you're a product manager or web developer, whether you want to know what to prioritise after an audit or what’s the best practice in the accessibility of text, there's something in here for everyone.
This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

If you'd like to access the webinar and see the accompanying slides and transcript you can find it here https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/jonathan-hassell-answers-questions-on-accessible-design-in-2022/

How do you get your boss to buy into accessibility? Accessibility takes time and money, so getting teammates and budget holders on side is essential.

Here, Jonathan Hassell and Pete Bricknell share the skills and tools to make that happen, turning accessibility from a handful of passionate experts into full company buy-in.

They share advice and ideas on how to persuade your bosses to invest in accessibility by sharing the benefits that will help them win.

This audio was originally recorded as a webinar.

If you'd like to access the webinar and see the accompanying slides and transcript you can find it here https://www.hassellinclusion.com/webinars/topic-how-do-i-get-my-boss-to-buy-into-accessibility/

Some of the world's greatest innovations were initially made for people who have disabilities.

So this time the Hassell Inclusion team are looking how product teams can be helped to think differently by engaging with the views of people with disabilities about their products.

You’ll learn: why accessible ATMs don’t work for all people with disabilities, but a cheap way of providing in-journey entertainment via people’s own devices just might; why people who have difficulty holding devices might be a key demographic for sales of smart glasses; how some of the greatest innovations of all time were initially made for people who were blind or deaf; and how you can get these sorts of valuable insights into your product ideation process.

Transcript available at: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/blog/innovation-via-user-research-with-people-with-disabilities/

Due to Covid-19 many organisations are pivoting to digital, or are under pressure to accelerate their existing digital roadmap. So you do you make sure you don't forget accessibility while you're doing that?

So this time the Hassell Inclusion team are discussing how to deliver accessibility while you’re racing.

You’ll learn: why asking your customers and staff what’s most important for them will help you focus your time, how “little and often” expert support can help you include accessibility when you’re updating your site, how best to avoid public criticism by communicating with customers where you’ve not had time to get accessibility right first time, and how live and snapshot audits can quickly help you find issues in products that you have time to make accessible by design, when you’re “fixing them after”.

Transcript available at: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/blog/accessibility-while-youre-racing/

This time we’re doing something a little different. I’m interviewing one of our accessibility managers at Hassell Inclusion, Rob Wemyss, to discuss how to go from good to great in accessibility.

You’ll learn: why leaving accessibility testing until just before launch will cost you time and money, why moving your focus from compliance to customer experience can pay dividends, how to motivate teams to care about accessibility, and why you need to look at accessibility across all your digital products, not just your website.

Transcript available at: https://www.hassellinclusion.com/blog/going-from-good-to-great-in-digital-accessibility-digital-accessibility-experts-podcast-7/