Accessibility Standards and Remediation
Massachusetts Library System
The Challenge
A statewide learning platform serves people with a wide range of abilities, devices, and working conditions. Accessibility could not be a review step at the end, owned by one person and applied to work that was already finished. It had to be built into how the platform and its content were made, and it had to hold across work produced by staff, member subject matter experts, and outside vendors.
I set the accessibility requirement for our statewide learning platform at WCAG 2.2 AA and authored the internal standards, templates, and review process that bring courses and platform features into conformance. Accessibility is a design decision in my work rather than a compliance task at the end. The requirements are written down, the templates make the accessible choice the default, and review happens at intake instead of at launch. That design matters most for the work I do not produce myself, because much of our content comes from subject matter experts and vendors.
What I Led
- Set the platform's accessibility requirement at WCAG 2.2 AA, informed by Section 508 and universal design principles
- Authored the internal accessibility standards, accessible content templates, and the intake review process that applies them
- Review every new course and workshop for conformance and apply accessibility revisions before launch
- Conduct audits and remediation, including screen reader and assistive technology testing, keyboard navigation, and evaluation tooling
- Remediate websites and write accessible code, including semantic structure, headings, focus states, and color contrast
- Manage document and media accessibility, including alt text, captions, transcripts, and accessible PDFs
- Mentor staff, subject matter experts, and external contributors on the standards, and partner with contributors' supervisors when deliverables fall short
- Define accessibility expectations for vendors and external reviewers, and evaluate their deliverables against them
How I Approach Accessibility
Standards only work if people can actually meet them. Alongside the requirements, I build the templates, examples, and review checkpoints that make the accessible choice the easy one, and when something falls short the first move is coaching rather than correction after the fact. That is what allows accessibility to hold at scale across hundreds of courses and dozens of contributors, rather than depending on one person catching everything at the end.
Results
- WCAG 2.2 AA conformance across platform features and courses
- Accessibility built into governance, so it is maintained rather than retrofitted
- One shared standard that staff, subject matter experts, and vendors are all held to
- Accessibility practices that supported IACET accreditation, the first earned by a state library system in the country