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

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

Gabriel Martin, managing director, Digital Experience and Architecture at Accenture, takes accessibility to perhaps its ultimate scale.

Martin is tasked with transforming Accenture, and those that partner with it, into a completely accessible organization. This is no one-time overhaul of the website or examination of Accenture's physical facilities. Rather, Martin is in charge of integrating accessibility into every aspect of the Accenture world.

Based in Madrid, Spain, Martin has launched a four-pronged accessibility initiative with an impressive goal: 100 percent implementation across the company. While this may seem a stretch goal, he insists it is not.

We spoke recently with Martin about the company initiative. He comes to the job with an important non-business credential: He is colorblind, a different ability that has confronted him almost daily in the working world. With this personal, ever-present reminder of the need to make his project successful, he speaks passionately about infusing Accenture with an accessibility gene that will continue to express itself as the company evolves.

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

Martin: Accenture continuously looks to the future in its business practices, and is confident that new technologies will help bring millions of people with disabilities into the workforce over the next decade. Accenture believes organizations have a significant part to play in making sure technology helps bridge the gap for people with disabilities.

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

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

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

Designing for accessibility is good business sense in that it will encourage productivity and allow employees to focus on value-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, which means fostering a trusting, open and inclusive environment. So as a company, we set an ambitious goal to have all of Accenture people's interactions with software, devices and services, to be compliant with globally defined accessibility standards.

Is accessibility seen internally as a separate business unit that provides services internally, to vendors, and to non-vendor clients?

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

Can you please describe the four pillars of the project?

The four pillars of the project are changing software development, establishing ongoing operations, implementing ongoing monitoring and maintenance that ensures software is kept accessible, changing content creation and consumption behaviors, and supply diversity.

Changing software development The objectives for this pillar are to flag the importance of accessibility among software developers, establish accessibility steps and apply the same disciplines as for code issues, security or other performance standards. This means providing training courses to educate developers on what they need to understand, test and evaluate, conducting agile design reviews to identify problem areas before development, and implementing tools to validate accessibility compliance during the coding process.
Establishing ongoing operations After deployment, we implement ongoing monitoring and maintenance to ensure software remains accessible. Some examples are new internal IT processes that include checkpoints for validating accessibility requirements in all Accenture-developed software before it is deployed into production, and the use of third-party monitoring services to detect whether previously accessible items have become inaccessible and need an update.
Changing content creation and consumption behaviors The main objective is to ensure accessibility of existing and new content, which Accenture is doing by leveraging its partnership with Microsoft to create content with little or no effort by using the Microsoft AI platform, introducing web content accessibility-creation tools, and implementing closed captioning and real-time closed captioning for all live events.
Supplier diversity Accenture's goal in terms of supplier diversity is to design and procure accessibility standards by supporting Accenture Procurement in enabling Accenture software and hardware providers to meet company accessibility requirements. For instance, we are working with Microsoft to focus on accessible software products and investments in new features.

Why is the project designed to be ongoing rather than periodically updated?

The project is ongoing because as technology evolves, so will the accessibility software. Additionally, ongoing operations must be implemented to ensure the software is accurate and functional.

Who are the primary beneficiaries of the project?

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

Can you describe the accessibility relationship Accenture has with Microsoft?

We've identified our apps with the highest usage and are working with those vendors to improve accessibility. In some cases, we tested the apps and then provided feedback to the vendors. We want to work with them as a partner rather than just a consumer of their products. For instance, Accenture and Microsoft are working together to change content creation and consumption behaviors. Employees from both companies are exploring the development of new ways to create content with minimal effort leveraging the Microsoft artificial intelligence (AI) platform so that content is accessible. The goal is to measure the amount of accessible content created and shared by employees using Microsoft Office 365.

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