Documenting decisions is an important part of BS 8878 and is
something that will need to be done throughout the development
process.
Scope (Clause 1)
This clause provides a list of recommendations that BS 8878
covers, and the types of organizations that should consider using
the standard.
Normative references (Clause 2)
This brief clause makes note of the normative references that
can be found in annex A of the document.
Terms, Definitions and abbreviations (Clause 3)
Brief clause as per title
This policy sets out the organization's commitment to web
accessibility.
This policy is based on the organizational policy, but specific
to the individual product. Each web product needs its own
accessibility policy.
The accessibility statement for each product gives users
information about how they can get the best experience with the web
product. This will include highlighting special features in the
product, how the user can customise their browser for a better
experience, and also any known accessibility limitations that the
product may have. The statement will also include a way for people
with disabilities to feedback comment, and complain about the
product.
Note that the accessibility statement can be written from the
outset, but may evolve during the development process.
Creating an
accessibility statement
Making decisions on accessibility (Clause 5)
How accessible the finished product is will be influenced by a
number of factors. Discussion of these factors is both critical to
the success of the product and necessary for conformance.
Decisions need to be documented so that a record of the
rationale for making them is available.
This documenting process also forces organizations into thinking
carefully about why certain decisions have been made. Some
decisions may adversely affect the accessibility of a product may
have been necessary for functional reasons or due to prohibitive
costs.
Factors that may affect the accessibility of the product may
include:
- How practical it is to provide greater accessibility
- Financial implications
- Disruption that the work may cause
- The degree and extent to which the work will benefit users with
disabilities.
These discussion documents may be used to set precedents for
future discussions, or to justify why decisions were made when
dealing with third parties.
Sixteen steps (Clause 6)
The standard presents 16 steps to be taken from the pre-start to
post-launch of the web product development.
The following image shows the 16 steps required for conformance
to BS 8878. These steps can be grouped into 7 different stages.
(image or movie showing the 16 steps grouped into 7 stages)
- Ensuring you have the right research and understanding in the
initial conception and requirements analysis for the web product:
see steps 1 to 6 (6.1 to
6.6).
- Making strategic choices based on that research: see steps 7 to
11 (6.7 to 6.11).
- The decision whether to create or procure the web product
in-house or contract out externally: see step 11
(6.11).
- The production of the web product: see steps 12 and 13
(6.12 and 6.13).
- The evaluation of the product: see step14
(6.14).
- The launch of the web product: see step 15
(6.15).
- Post-launch maintenance: see step 16
(6.16).
Guidelines (Clause 7)
This part of the document includes information and references to
established guidelines including Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines WCAG 2.0 (link), authoring guidelines, Rich
Internet Applications (link to WAI ARIA), Guidance for
Mobile devices, IPTV, and guidance for designing interfaces for
older people.
WCAG 2.0
Guidelines
ATAG Guidelines
Assuring accessibility throughout a product's lifecycle (Clause
8)
This is an important part of the document that discusses the
specifics of:
- Summarising the approach (8.1)
- gathering information about the needs of disabled users
(8.2),
- creating a test plan (8.3),
- summarising the testing methods including user, manual, and
automated testing (8.4),
- post launch programme of testing (8.5)
Annexes
- Annex A Normative references
- Annex B Terms, definitions and abbreviations
- Annex C Disability and the law
- Annex D Business case for making web products accessible
- Annex E Examples of a web accessibility policy and web
accessibility statement
- Annex F Allocation of responsibilities
- Annex G The accessibility challenges of different types of web
product
- Annex H How disabled and older people experience web
products
- Annex I Examples of web product purposes, audiences, user
goals, user tasks and degrees of user-experience for those
tasks
- Annex J Measuring user success
- Annex K The user-personalized approach to accessibility
- Annex L Procurement of authoring tools, software, components or
web-services
- Annex M A guide to dealing with correspondence and complaints
about a web product's accessibility
- Annex N Suggested user profiles
- Annex O A guide to user testing with disabled and older
people
