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Week 2: Managing Digital Accessibility Culture
We are also enjoying reading through the Activity posts. There are some really good elevator pitches there. Once you have posted your pitch, be sure to read through others' and comment on one or two. The idea is to tailor your pitch, using the business arguments, laws, and knowledge of barriers people with disabilities encounter, covered last week, to create a short, convincing argument to win the support of a person in a decision making role.

Moving on to this week's topics, for digital accessibility to successfully become part of an organization’s culture, there needs to be a person to lead up the effort, and there needs to be buy-in from groups throughout the organization. This week in The Committee and the Champion learning pathway, we’ll introduce you to the "Champion," the person who will lead the effort, and the "Committee," made up of influential, often senior people, from across the organization who will lead efforts within their respective groups. In Activity 2 To Be or Not to Be the Accessibility Champion, you will assess your own characteristics to determine if you have all that is needed to be a good champion, or whether it might be worth hiring a person with specialized knowledge in digital accessibility and in managing people.

At Ryerson University, we have two accessibility champions, one for the larger university, and one for the school of continuing education (i.e. Greg). The committee is a combined group from both the university and continuing education. During the school year the committee meets face-to-face every couple months to discuss any issues, plans, projects etc. related to accessibility at the university. The two champions also meet regularly to keep each other up to date.

At the Chang School of Continuing Education, we have a special awareness of accessibility, with our (now former) Dean being the person who introduced the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). Needless to say, buy-in from the senior level is not a problem here. For some organizations, however, there may be some effort needed to get buy-in from senior people, but it is absolutely necessary for implementation of accessibility culture to be successful. Last weeks coverage of the laws and business cases, and the elevator pitch activity should help with putting together arguments to gain that buy-in.

This week we’ll also introduce you to the elements of an organization that need to be fostered in order for accessibility culture to grow. These include: understanding the current accessibility status of an organization, and the gaps to be filled; understanding what accessibility knowledge is needed across roles in the organization, and the training to be developed and delivered; understanding the strategies and solutions for advancing accessibility culture; and the big one, understanding how to manage change. In any organization with more than a few people, you will likely encounter resistance from some who perhaps do not understand the benefits of accessibility, or are just resistant to change because they like the way things are. Activity 3, Responding to Resistance, expands on the elevator pitch activity, and will help you develop well thought out responses to help counter various arguments against change when you encounter them.

Just a quick reminder, if you have not already begun preparing your policy document for the Course Project, you should not wait too much longer to get started. This week several elements are discussed that will provide content for your policy.

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