Elsevier’s Company Accessibility PolicyAlicia Wise, Director of Universal Access

Elsevier’s Accessibility Journey

• About Us• Accessibility Working Group• About our Accessibility Policy• Challenges and Solutions• Working in Partnership

• Began by bringing together those engaged and interested

• User Centered Design – supports 130 web products

• Digital Book Archive fulfills c. 4,000 requests to worldwide services that support people with disabilities each year

• Universal Access – special team in strategy

• Operations w/ experts in EPUB2, EPUB3, MathML, and tagged PDFs

Accessibility Working Group

• Internal news and webinars• Accessibility Matters

Opportunistic within a strategic framework

• The terrific tale of Tripp Narup• Creation of Accessibility Policy Task Force• Email invite to nominate a task force representatives• Delegates from across business and operations helped design policy

◦ Product Management◦ Book Publishing◦ Journal Publishing◦ Legal◦ Operations◦ User Centered Design◦ Finance

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Policy Development

• Divided into sub working groups◦ Industry accessibility best practices◦ Physical accessibility* laws and best practices◦ Print disability law, non-US laws, and HR practices◦ Partners and third party supplier standards◦ Web accessibility◦ Inventory of our sites

• Several rounds of review and iteration using web conferencing• Final approval by Upper Management Committee in Jan 2012• Final polish by Corporate Communications then published to web

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*Physical accessibility was excluded from the policy since each international location each had hardened laws and felt that would dilute focus of policy and expand complexity

What’s in the Policy?

• Main Idea: All products should be accessible to people with disabilities and comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).

• Scope: Print Products, internal and external websites and tools, eBooks, partners and suppliers

• Benchmark: WCAG 2.0 (A)• Outreach: We partner with the industry experts• UCD: Apply user centered design best practices• Timeline: Policy will be implemented from 2013 onwards

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View Elsevier’s Accessibility Policy: http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-policies/accessibility-policy

Challenge 1: Demonstrating Business Case

“Why should I care about accessibility, there aren’t any blind doctors”

For our flagship products there can be more than a dozen requirements competing for a release at any given time. We have to prove that there is a business case for addressing accessibility

Solutions:•Show that our customers are asking for accessible products•Put a revenue number on numbers of customers with accessibility requirements•Team up with an executive level champion •Create an educational program to interest product teams

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Challenge 2: Where does the budget come from?

“Wait a minute you are going to charge me to comply with the company accessibility policy? How much is this going to cost?”

Product managers need to account for accessibility in their bottom line and in budget planning.

Solutions:•Accessibility and Usability are twins. Invest to enhance the User Experience and you can get twin brother accessibility too!•Tackle accessibility going forward, feature by feature•Fly under the radar

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Challenge 3: Large company with diverse dev practices

“We use the agile methodology, so you better not hand me 10 pages of accessibility documentation to follow”

There is not a one size fits all solution for tackling accessibility across diverse product and development teams. Elsevier produces over 130 web products.

Solutions:•Be adaptable: (some teams will want a UI spec, some will want a live tutorial, some will want a best practices wiki, some will want training)•Create a central accessibility center of expertise•Re-Use: (best practice documents, WCAG 2.0 review template, recommended code snippets)

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Challenge 4: Need policy to be enforceable

“If I’m not going to be sued and not going to be fired, then should I care about following the accessibility policy”

Having a well written policy is a good start, but how can we provide some incentives for enforcing?Solutions:•High-level champions•Use positive reinforcement, not the policing mentality•Create a (highly visible!) product scorecard•Demonstrate the appeal of accessibility as a feature with glossy marketing

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Challenge 5: WCAG 2.0 not easiest guidelines to understandBusiness: “Show me the business case”Product Mangers: “Show me the customer need”Developers: “Show me the code”UX: “I’ve shown you all of that. Wait a minute, how do I map the recommended solutions to the WCAG2.0 checkpoints?”Solutions:•Create a WCAG 2.0 template for reviewing products•Provide a separate report on compliance with guidelines•Focus on practical advice, techniques, and solutions

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Challenge 5: quality feedback loops

Where are we at?

• Policy went live last month• Key products have already had WCAG reviews• Typically we are in the plan and requirements stage for most other web

products• We aspire to sustain accessibility in all of our products

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Determine opportunity for accessibility release

Product managers author requirement to follow W3C WCAG 2.0 A standard

UCD Conducts Review Against W3C Standards

Development team implements suggestions. UCD helps conduct QA

Accessibility is baked into:

•requirements

•process

•development tools

•code/web components

What are examples of policy wins?

• At least 10 WCAG 2.0 reviews completed including:• SD, Scopus, SciVal Experts, EV2, NursingSkills, MCS LMS, Health

Advance, Lancet, Cell, HR Portal• includes 2 largest revenue generating S&T Sites• Reed Elsevier Supplier Management has included WCAG 2.0, Section

508 requirements in our RFPs• At least 3 Elsevier vendors have accessibility requirements including

Health Advance platform• Specific funding and budget allocated to tackle accessibility and usability

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• Partnered with University of Illinois, Indiana Univ, and Michigan State to help test features before releases

• Developed best practices guideline to be used across Elsevier

• Development team expects accessibility in each release

◦ ARIA landmarks◦ ARIA labels◦ Good structure (headings, lists)◦ Keyboard Operability◦ Management of keyboard focus◦ Logical tab order

ScienceDirect - going above and beyond

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What is planned for 2013?

• Training of staff in WCAG 2.0, Web Accessibility• Release of accessible Math (MathJAX/MathML)• EPUB2 fulfillment with Book Archive/AccessText Network• Accessible EPUB3 template creation• PDF Tagging Upgrades• Several web site WCAG 2.0 reviews scheduled:

◦ internal book editorial site◦ College of Direct Support LMS system

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Working in Partnership

• EDItEUR et al. in the UK• WIPO Stakeholders Platform• AccessText Network• National Federation for the Blind• Variety of universities and disability support offices

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Thank you for listening! Any questions?

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Elsevier is committed to access, quality, and sustainability!

Thank you! @wisealic a.wise@elsevier.com