How (and why) we develop standards
The How
They say you shouldn’t ask how laws and sausages are made. But how about accessibility reporting standards? That’s an excellent question, and we’re more than happy to provide an answer!
Developing Standards
Our nonprofit member organization is tasked with creating new standard product labels so that people know how accessible a product is for people with different types of disabilities.
There are a number required elements that need to be developed.
Consumer / User elements
This includes specifications of the accessibility reporting information that will be used by persons making purchasing decisions. We need to make sure that consumers understand and can easily use our labeling systems. To do this, we involve members of the public (primarily our supporters) as survey and user test participants, and in periodic Q&A sessions throughout development.
Professional / Practitioner elements
Information will be required in order to reliably generate a valid standardized accessibility report, that will be used by people developing, testing, and selling products. Professionals who test products will need all of the resources necessary to generate a standardized report with a score that can be used on a label. We involve our professional members throughout the development process.
Alpha and Beta Prototypes
During the development process, it is required that several prototypes be released to SAR’s professional membership to ensure the utility of the proposed standards, as well as our non-professional membership to ensure the usability and practicality of the proposed elements.
Documentation and related resources
For anyone who will implement and use the standard, full documentation and any necessary tools (e.g., data sets) must be made available. That is, highly skilled professionals who develop test processes for accessibility will also need the published validation standards that are necessary to ensure that they are generating reliable scores using their proprietary testing methods.
Members make it possible
Our standards development processes are conducted by our volunteer professional membership, and overseen by our leadership (who are also members).
The standards development projects are run just like other industry projects. We have a contracted Standards Development Director, and a member elected Standards Development Stewardship Panel to oversee the projects.
The Why
Why are we developing these reporting standards?
Here are some of the top reasons:
The consumer product marketplace is smaller than it should be
The accessibility testing field is growing; but the consumer product field needs a nudge in order to grow. Think about washing machines and other consumer household devices. They’re not accessible now, and so the accessibility testing field has an un-tapped market waiting for the right tipping point to come along.
The website accessibility marketplace is smaller than it should be
If you work in the web accessibility field then you know about the annual WebAIM Million report. And you also know that this report tells us that just 3% of the world’s top websites can be considered “accessible”. It’s not hard to determine that the internet is still fundamentally an un-tapped market.
How can you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
How can you say with confidence that your test process is better than anyone else’s? How can your customers compare the scores you are giving them to the scores given by competitors? You are competing on quality and price, but nobody has a rulebook. Nobody really knows the score.
Not everyone is playing nicely
Some companies have bypassed the idea of quality (and truth and ethics) entirely, and are selling “the best”; “the fastest”‘; “the easiest” ways to “fix” accessibility. How do you prove this is just silicon snake oil without a standardized way to score how good a technology is in terms of accessibility. It’s just your word against theirs.
Join Us!
Our standards development is member-directed, member-involved, member-overseen, and member-voted.
You can get all of the benefits of membership.
Become a MemberLet’s start a discussion.
We have only touched on a couple of the main issues in this short article. If you have additional pain-points around accessibility testing, we can help.
Book a Meeting With Us