The head of Accenture'saccessibility initiative comes to the job with an importantnon-business credential: He is colorblind, a different ability thathas confronted him almost daily in the working world. (Image:Shutterstock)

Accessibility, the latest corporate buzzword, tends to bedefined either by audience or by function. An event or conferencedefines it as taking into account and responding to the variedabilities of attendees so that they can concentrate on content,uninhibited by an ability that may not be considered mainstream. Awebsite design with accessibility baked in focuses first onfunction—navigating the site, being able to absorb the content invarious ways—and then on the audience, which may be a general one spanningthe range of abilities.

In both cases a smooth user experience—UX—is the goal.

Gabriel Martin is managingdirector, Digital
Experience and Architecture at Accenture.

Gabriel Martin, managing director, Digital Experience andArchitecture at Accenture, takes accessibility to perhaps itsultimate scale.

Martin is tasked with transforming Accenture, and those thatpartner with it, into a completely accessible organization. This is no one-timeoverhaul of the website or examination of Accenture's physicalfacilities. Rather, Martin is in charge of integratingaccessibility into every aspect of the Accenture world.

Based in Madrid, Spain, Martin has launched a four-prongedaccessibility initiative with an impressive goal: 100 percentimplementation across the company. While this may seem a stretchgoal, he insists it is not.

We spoke recently with Martin about the company initiative. Hecomes to the job with an important non-business credential: He iscolorblind, a different ability that has confronted him almostdaily in the working world. With this personal, ever-presentreminder of the need to make his project successful, he speakspassionately about infusing Accenture with an accessibility genethat will continue to express itself as the company evolves.

BenefitsPro: What prompted Accenture to take on thisvery comprehensive accessibility project?

Martin: Accenture continuously looks to thefuture in its business practices, and is confident that newtechnologies will help bring millions of people with disabilitiesinto the workforce over the next decade. Accenture believesorganizations have a significant part to play in making suretechnology helps bridge the gap for people with disabilities.

One of the first projects taken on under this initiative wasrelated to how employees track their time against billing codes(i.e., the timesheets you fill out every week). An employee who wasblind came to us and said his mother had to help him input his timebecause the software wasn't accessible to him. Accenture thenproceeded to update the program to make it accessible to him, andwe have continued to work on similar projects ever since.

I also have a personal connection to our accessibility work – Iam color blind, and at times need assistance in this area. Forinstance, if a document includes a chart that lists successes ingreen and errors in red, that's tough for me. I'll need text labelsto tell the difference.

What is the business rationale behind it? How was theROI on the investment arrived at?

Designing for accessibility is good business sense in that itwill encourage productivity and allow employees to focus onvalue-add activities.

Additionally, we believe that it's just the right thing to do.One of Accenture's core values is respect for the individual, whichmeans fostering a trusting, open and inclusive environment. So as acompany, we set an ambitious goal to have all of Accenture people'sinteractions with software, devices and services, to be compliantwith globally defined accessibility standards.

Is accessibility seen internally as a separate businessunit that provides services internally, to vendors, and tonon-vendor clients?

Accessibility is not viewed as a separate business unit, butrather a way to improve each employee's digital user experience.The program's overall focus is not just on people withaccessibility needs, but on adjusting the behavior of everyAccenture employee so that accessibility actions are included fromthe start in all software development projects, daily work, contentcreation, procurement opportunities and technology support.

Can you please describe the four pillars of theproject?

The four pillars of the project are changing softwaredevelopment, establishing ongoing operations, implementing ongoingmonitoring and maintenance that ensures software is keptaccessible, changing content creation and consumption behaviors,and supply diversity.

1. Changing software development The objectivesfor this pillar are to flag the importance of accessibility amongsoftware developers, establish accessibility steps and apply thesame disciplines as for code issues, security or other performancestandards. This means providing training courses to educatedevelopers on what they need to understand, test and evaluate,conducting agile design reviews to identify problem areas beforedevelopment, and implementing tools to validate accessibilitycompliance during the coding process.
2. Establishing ongoing operations Afterdeployment, we implement ongoing monitoring and maintenance toensure software remains accessible. Some examples are new internalIT processes that include checkpoints for validating accessibilityrequirements in all Accenture-developed software before it isdeployed into production, and the use of third-party monitoringservices to detect whether previously accessible items have becomeinaccessible and need an update.
3. Changing content creation and consumptionbehaviors The main objective is to ensure accessibility ofexisting and new content, which Accenture is doing by leveragingits partnership with Microsoft to create content with little or noeffort by using the Microsoft AI platform, introducing web contentaccessibility-creation tools, and implementing closed captioningand real-time closed captioning for all live events.
4. Supplier diversity Accenture's goal in termsof supplier diversity is to design and procure accessibilitystandards by supporting Accenture Procurement in enabling Accenturesoftware and hardware providers to meet company accessibilityrequirements. For instance, we are working with Microsoft to focuson accessible software products and investments in newfeatures.

Why is the project designed to be ongoing rather thanperiodically updated?

The project is ongoing because as technology evolves, so willthe accessibility software. Additionally, ongoing operations mustbe implemented to ensure the software is accurate andfunctional.

Who are the primary beneficiaries of theproject?

The primary beneficiaries are the hundreds of millions of peoplewith disabilities who will now be able to enter the workforce.Accenture and our clients also benefit through employees that cando their job more easily and effectively.

Can you describe the accessibility relationshipAccenture has with Microsoft?

We've identified our apps with the highest usage and are workingwith those vendors to improve accessibility. In some cases, wetested the apps and then provided feedback to the vendors. We wantto work with them as a partner rather than just a consumer of theirproducts. For instance, Accenture and Microsoft are workingtogether to change content creation and consumption behaviors.Employees from both companies are exploring the development of newways to create content with minimal effort leveraging the Microsoftartificial intelligence (AI) platform so that content isaccessible. The goal is to measure the amount of accessible contentcreated and shared by employees using Microsoft Office 365.