The Canadian federal government recently adopted CAN/ASC - EN 301 549:2024, Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services (EN 301 549:2021, IDT), which means that accessibility requirements for Canadian government services will reach the same level as in Europe.
While I have never worked with the Canadian federal government aside from a Co-Op term in the 1990s and know that CAN?ASC - EN 301 549:2024 is not even fully part of all federal government procurement yet, I dived into the document just to learn. And it really transformed how I look at accessibility, to such a point that I am no longer happy with my own accessibility standards. And so, over the new few weeks I will be adapting my policies and working on websites and applications to bring them closer in line with this standard.
Why? First, it is the right thing to do. Second, Siteimp scans are a really good toolkit to help shed insight into that level of accessibility. And so, if I follow the 78 solutions idea and already have the tooling I need to implement a solution to a problem, it makes sense to push towards solving that problem. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s the ultimate way to test how far I scan stretch a new product.
The actual process will start at rewriting some policy. Luckily, my Dad has agreed to help out. He has a real gift at writing clear policy documents and will correct against my natural urge to get conversational. Once we have policy written, I can publish it and get feedback on it. Then once I have incorporated that feedback, I can start working on properties. Luckily, I don’t use video or audio yet, I don’t do trade shows or displays and I keep my use of images minimal. Plus I always use Siteimp on my properties while they are in development (as an example - 78 Solutions is a Hugo website so in development it runs at http://localhost:1313 - I have done two Siteimp scans while writing this article) so they’re already quite accessible.
Thus far, it looks like the biggest changes I will make will be to technical support where luckily another one of my passions will come in handy. I play fantasy baseball and have been with the same league for more than two decades. We have a few blind and many people with different levels of visual ability playing in our league and when our former league manager passed away, my friend RB and I took over. One of our first tasks was making our league fully accessible and providing support to our users. So, I have already implemented something like this once before, just with baseball fans instead of users.
If you have ever played fantasy baseball (or especially managed a league) you’ll understand that since I already went into the lions’ den, working with the lambs now will be easy.
Conclusion
Over the next few weeks as we release Siteimp and Siteimp Watch some of the results of our new policies will become immediately noticeable. As that frees up time, I will be implementing the new policies across everything else I have built. It will take awhile to get more fully aligned with these new policies but again, it’s the right thing to do and it is going to be an amazing way to test working with Siteimp every single day on a real life project that will directly impact six websites and three products.