Telling The Story, Better Accessibility Statements with ASPIRE (W)
In our series of free weekly webinars April 29th saw a session focused on the work of the ASPIRE service which helps publishers and vendors tell the story of the amazing accessibility work they are doing to create a transparent environment for content.
This page contains:
Full Video of the Webinar
Speakers
- Richard Orme, DAISY Consortium—host and chair
- Huw Alexander, TextBOX Digital
- Alistair McNaught, McNaught Consulting
Session Overview
Huw Alexander gave us a brief overview of what this session would cover:
- Accessibility statements and the Law
- The Evolution of ASPIRE
- The ASPIREreview process
- What makes a Gold Statement
- The Benefits of Accessibility Statements
An overview of the legal situation in the UK and Europe from Alistair McNaught framed the webinar and gave us context and background for the work they have achieved. (Publishers can get an overview of legal regulations in their own market from our legislation page). Organizations are required to provide an accessibility statement as part of content provision and this includes library services etc.
The ASPIRE project began in the summer of 2018 as a crowdsourced project with a large number of stakeholders. Looking at accessibility statements, the project uncovered many untold stories of good work within our industry. Publishers weren’t telling us about the accessibility of their content and not engaging with their customers about their plans for accessible experiences.
Fast forward a year and the project has developed into a fully fledged cost-effective service which offers an audit and review of publishing accessibility statements together with a set of transparent, positive and clear recommendations for improvement. Scoring and the possibility of “Gold” level status has meant that we now have a range of wonderful examples of how the anatomy of a statement should look.
Huw and Alistair talked us through a number of examples explaining the key benefits of getting this right. By “telling your story about your content” publishers are fulfilling their legal obligations whilst engaging and supporting customers and readers.
Related Resources
- PowerPoint slide deck (2.9 MB)
- Full transcript Word document (33 KB)
Referenced in the webinar were:
