Summary: An accessibility conformance report (ACR) is only a snapshot of a product or service's accessibility status at that particular point in time—not that a company is genuinely committed to accessibility. This article breaks down what separates authentic commitment from compliance theater, from vetting vendors beyond their paperwork to spotting a meaningful “shift left” culture, according to Salesforce’s Jacqueline Tolisano, Senior Director of Product Accessibility.
Your organization is considering adopting a new digital product or technology, and you want to ensure it’s consistent with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. You also want to be confident that vendors and providers are truly committed to accessibility.
That’s where an accessibility conformance report (ACR) comes in.
An ACR is a document verifying if a product passes a technical audit for accessibility, as outlined by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, which was passed in 1973 and amended in 1998 by Congress “requir[ing] Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities.”
Put simply, it evaluates whether or not a digital product or service complies with global accessibility standards at a specific point in time. It’s a snapshot, rather than a long-term certification that software or a website is indefinitely accessible.
While multiple ways exist to complete an ACR, the most common is through a voluntary product accessibility template (VPAT), a standardized document originated by the Information Technology Industry Council.
An ACR is essential in our digital world, but if your company is serious about access and wants to collaborate with other vendors who are similarly and genuinely dedicated to including people with disabilities, then there are a few more things you can do to determine whether they truly care about accessibility.
Key Takeaways
Having an ACR is a great starting point, “but it’s not the end-all and be-all,” explains Jacqueline Tolisano, Senior Director of Product Accessibility at Salesforce. “It can easily be framed as more accessible than it actually is, because it's a voluntary document. It can exclude certain things. So if you see an ACR that shows 100% support across the board, you may want to be suspicious of that.”
Those with a deep knowledge of accessibility issues, and the complex ways they show up in company cultures and products, understand perfection isn’t possible. Inclusive design is an ongoing learning and refining process, informed by the lived experiences of team members and product users.
Tolisano, who has worked in accessibility since 2012, believes true champions are candid regarding where they miss the mark.
“Honest companies that show a real commitment to accessibility will showcase where they support, where they partially support, and where there’s room for improvement,” she says. “Transparency matters.”
This embrace of accessibility emanates from within, she explains. It must be threaded throughout every process, specifically having a team set apart to steward this imperative. They must work with designers and developers to guarantee digital infrastructure conforms to WCAG and other inclusive design principles.
“Really, it comes down to that software development lifecycle commitment, where accessibility is baked into the process,” she says. An accessibility-forward organization will ensure “bugs are resolved and closed within a certain number of days,” and be candid regarding “where [they] are on the roadmap for fixing those. Those are the types of things I’d want to see from a corporation with a true commitment to accessibility.”
ACRs are not the only avenue for initial vetting of a potential vendor. Supposing they even have a compliance document, another sure way to evaluate a company is to conduct some of your own testing of their software.
“The ACR is an excellent first step, but it’s a voluntary disclosure,” Tolisano says. “A lot of key aspects might be missing from it, especially if they’re saying they fully support things.”
Once you have conducted an internal audit of the product, you are then equipped with concerns to raise during the contracting process.
For instance, Tolisano says you might state, “‘We did our own independent evaluation, and we're seeing some significant blocks here. Are you aware of these, and have you mapped out their resolution?’ That can be part of the contract negotiations, and it also gives us a really important picture of whether we want to move forward with them as a vendor or software solution.”
When accessibility is not a legitimate value for an organization or vendor, it’s more of an afterthought, and design solutions remain reactionary.
Rather than build inclusive design into the process from the very beginning—what Salesforce refers to as its “shift left” culture—too many companies wait for something to go wrong, a flag to be raised by a user with a disability, before they address it.
“Someone who has truly adopted a shift left approach wants to prevent problems so they never exist in the first place,” Tolisano says. “There are lots of ways to do that, and it's always challenging to scale at large, matrixed organizations, but it’s possible.”
It begins with educating designers, having accessibility advocates on the team, and hiring employees with disabilities. You need “allies” who are willing to “raise their hand in a scrum meeting or stand up and say, ‘Have we thought about accessibility here? Has this been tested?’” she explains. “It’s about working with the various scrum teams to bake accessibility in as organically as possible, so it’s not seen as a tax they have to pay after the fact.
“It’s really about working with teams at the various stages of design and development with strategic approaches that scale easily, without asking them to take on a lot of heavy manual testing,” adds Tolisano. “Some strategic manual testing, like keyboard testing, catches a broad cross-section of accessibility issues and only takes a few minutes.”
No doubt, change comes from the ground up, but it’s difficult to ensure accessibility across products if a company’s leadership doesn’t embody that commitment or have lived experience with disability.
For Salesforce, “it’s ingrained within our ecosystem and our culture,” says Tolisano, who has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). “It’s within our most important goal for the year, which is around trust. We lose customer trust when we're not accessible.” From CEO Marc Benioff “on down, there are expectations that we're building as accessibly as we can.”
In fact, a senior executive leadership committee exists to make certain that accessibility is “basically everywhere it's possible,” she says. Setting requirements, innovating, and fixing bugs is “a lot easier when it comes with executive commitment.”
Leadership and the product development team are central to designing accessibly. They’re the ultimate stewards of inclusive design and whether a company actually embraces the accessibility principles it touts in marketing materials or other communications.
If they’re approaching it properly, they will gather insights from their team members with disabilities across the organization, as well.
Salesforce’s Office of Accessibility plays a key role in ensuring product accessibility and overall user experience.
“If there’s a particular tool we're required to use internally and accessibility issues crop up, we help make sure employees aren't blocked from being successful in their role,” Tolisano says. “We have a lot of coverage—both technically, from our team working with designers and engineers, and from other teams across the organization that provide internal support as well.”
So the next time you’re evaluating whether a company genuinely cares about accessibility or not, you can do a few concrete things:
Lastly, don’t hesitate to consult your team members, clients, or other reliable sources on whether they consider a potential vendor’s products or services accessible. People with disabilities are always the best source for first-hand experiences and will give you an honest assessment on whether a company is serious about inclusion, or merely dressing up as one.
A founding partner of InclusionHub, Salesforce is helping bring greater accessibility and digital inclusion to the professional world. Visit its a11y website to learn more.