Prioritizing Remediation of Accessibility Issues

1. Prioritizing Remediation of Accessibility Issues

2. About Me Karl Groves, Dir. of Training, Deque Systems karl.groves@deque.com @karlgroves 571-455-4862 Also, a rock star*

3. Agenda • What is an accessibility issue? • Why prioritize? • Understanding risk • Challenges • Remediation Approaches • Considerations • Simple Prioritization • Advanced Prioritization

4. Things to keep in mind • I am mathematically challenged • This topic is exploratory, not declarative • Please participate, ask questions, offer new ideas

5. What is an accessibility issue?

6. What is an Accessibility Issue? • Bug: Term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways.

7. Why Prioritize?

8. Why Prioritize? • Apply resources most effectively • Minimize accessibility’s impact on business • Motivate development staff • Maximize positive impact for users • Reduction of Risk

9. Understanding Risk

10. Understanding Risk • Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity (including the choice of inaction) will lead to a loss (an undesirable outcome).

11. Understanding Risk • Ultimately, remediation of bugs is an effort at risk mitigation • Risks of • Poor quality (Users having problem with system) • Lost income • Ancillary losses • Administrative Complaint (public sector) • Litigation

12. Understanding Risk • Probability Probability = (number of negative events) / (population)

13. Understanding Risk • Risk Amount Risk Amount = (probability of a negative event) * (expected loss in case of negative event)

14. Understanding Risk • ROI ROI = ((Risk Amount - Investment)/ Investment)*100 Where: Risk Amount = Expected loss * probability Investment = Money spent on Accessibility

15. What factors impact our ability to fix our system? Challenges

16. Challenges • Not all accessibility problems are equal • Time • Impact • Impact on Users • Impact on Business • WCAG Level & SC is inappropriate for determining priority

17. Challenges • Time • Often at a premium • Time spent on after-the-fact bug repairs is time that is taken away from meeting other business needs • See, “Technical Debt”, Martin Fowler

18. Challenges • Impact • Budgets • Resources • System

19. Remediation Approaches

20. Simple Prioritization • Simple Prioritization • Focused solely on time and (simple) impact • How long will it take? • How bad is the problem?

21. Simple Prioritization • Pros • Focused on the user • Super simple • Often, “hunch” from expert is as good as something more formal • Cons • Does not take into consideration impact on business or system

22. Advanced Prioritization • User Impact • Ease & Speed • Impact on Interface • Volume • Location • Secondary Benefit • Each item ranked: None (0), Low (1), Medium (2), High (3)

23. Advanced Prioritization • Impact on Users with Disabilities • Broken down by type of user & impact on each • IB - Blind • IV – Visually Impaired (non-blind) • IH – Deaf & HoH • IM – Motor • IC - Cognitive • IS – Speech • Impact* = (IB + IV + IH + IM + IC + IS)

24. Advanced Prioritization • Ease and Speed of Repair

25. Advanced Prioritization • Impact on Interface & Operation

26. Advanced Prioritization • Volume of Repeat Issues • How many times does the exact same issue occur? • How many times do (very) similar issues occur?

27. Advanced Prioritization • Location of Issues • Traffic • Criticality of location

28. Advanced Prioritization • Secondary Benefit • Older Users • Low Literacy Users • Low Bandwidth Users • Reduced Dev/ Maintenance time • Alternate Devices • SEO • Usability • Tie to org goals

29. Advanced Prioritization • (Impact + Repair Speed + Location + Secondary Benefits) * Volume = Priority • Sort all issues according to priority • Fix em!

30. Advanced Prioritization • What’s missing? • Normalize data? • Do some of this ahead of time? • Importance ranking for each factor • Risk from Litigious user types?

31. Dilution Managing Remediation

32. Managing Remediation • You have a report full of bugs • Now what do you do?

33. Managing Remediation • Managing Remediation is a process not unlike dilution in chemistry • Dilution: The process of reducing the concentration of a solute in solution • In our case: reducing concentration (defect density) in a system Concentration = numBugs/linesOfCode

34. Managing Remediation Accessibility Errors - High Priority - Medium Priority - Low Priority Non-CompliantSystem Partially-CompliantSystem Mostly-CompliantSystem

35. Managing Remediation Fully-Compliant System

36. Managing Remediation • Measuring improvement (concentrationStart - concentrationEnd) / time Only 1st order accurate. Perfect for snapshots.

37. Conclusion

38. Conclusion • In the quest for #perfectA11y, prioritization helps us get closer quicker • We must maximize efficiency to have high positive impact • Multiple factors exist that can be used to determine priority • Iterate remediation efforts to progressively dilute them • We can measure success

39. Connecting with Deque Twitter LinkedIn Web Email @dequesystems Deque Systems deque.com info@deque.com