Prioritizing Remediation of
Accessibility Issues
About Me
Karl Groves, Dir. of Training,
Deque Systems
karl.groves@deque.com
@karlgroves
571-455-4862
Also, a rock star*
Agenda
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What is an accessibility issue?
Why prioritize?
Understanding risk
Challenges
Remediation Approaches
– Considerations
– Simple Prioritization
– Advanced Prioritization
Things to keep in mind
• I am mathematically challenged
• This topic is exploratory, not declarative
– Please participate, ask questions, offer new ideas
WHAT IS AN
ACCESSIBILITY ISSUE?
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.
WHY PRIORITIZE?
Why Prioritize?
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Apply resources most effectively
Minimize accessibility’s impact on business
Motivate development staff
Maximize positive impact for users
Reduction of Risk
UNDERSTANDING RISK
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).
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
Understanding Risk
• Probability
Probability = (number of
negative events) /
(population)
Understanding Risk
• Risk Amount
Risk Amount =
(probability of a
negative event) *
(expected loss in
case of negative
event)
Understanding Risk
• ROI
ROI = ((Risk Amount - Investment)/ Investment)*100
Where:
Risk Amount = Expected loss * probability
Investment = Money spent on Accessibility
What factors impact our ability to fix our system?
CHALLENGES
Challenges
• Not all accessibility problems are equal
– Time
– Impact
• Impact on Users
• Impact on Business
• WCAG Level & SC is inappropriate for
determining priority
Challenges
• Time
– Often at a premium
– Time spent on after-thefact bug repairs is time
that is taken away from
meeting other business
needs
– See, “Technical Debt”,
Martin Fowler
Challenges
• Impact
– Budgets
– Resources
– System
REMEDIATION
APPROACHES
Simple Prioritization
• Simple Prioritization
– Focused solely on time
and (simple) impact
– How long will it take?
– How bad is the problem?
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
Advanced Prioritization
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User Impact
Ease & Speed
Impact on Interface
Volume
Location
Secondary Benefit
• Each item ranked: None (0), Low (1), Medium (2),
High (3)
Advanced Prioritization
• Impact on Users with Disabilities
– Broken down by type of user &
impact on each
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IB - Blind
IV – Visually Impaired (non-blind)
IH – Deaf & HoH
IM – Motor
IC - Cognitive
IS – Speech
• Impact* = (IB + IV + IH
+ IM + IC + IS)
Advanced Prioritization
• Ease and Speed of
Repair
Advanced Prioritization
• Impact on Interface &
Operation
Advanced Prioritization
• Volume of Repeat
Issues
– How many times does
the exact same issue
occur?
– How many times do
(very) similar issues
occur?
Advanced Prioritization
• Location of Issues
– Traffic
– Criticality of location
Advanced Prioritization
• Secondary Benefit
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Older Users
Low Literacy Users
Low Bandwidth Users
Reduced Dev/ Maintenance time
Alternate Devices
SEO
Usability
• Tie to org goals
Advanced Prioritization
• (Impact + Repair Speed + Location +
Secondary Benefits) * Volume = Priority
• Sort all issues according to priority
• Fix em!
Advanced Prioritization
• What’s missing?
– Normalize data?
– Do some of this ahead of time?
– Importance ranking for each factor
– Risk from Litigious user types?
Dilution
MANAGING REMEDIATION
Managing Remediation
• You have a report full of
bugs
• Now what do you do?
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
Managing Remediation
Accessibility Errors
- High Priority
- Medium Priority
- Low Priority
Non-Compliant
System
Partially-Compliant
System
Mostly-Compliant
System
Managing Remediation
Fully-Compliant
System
Managing Remediation
• Measuring improvement
(concentrationStart - concentrationEnd) /
time
Only 1st order accurate. Perfect for snapshots.
CONCLUSION
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
Connecting with Deque
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@dequesystems
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Deque Systems
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deque.com
Email
info@deque.com