At the beginning of October 2023, we announced our mission to become the most accessible platform in the world. As part of the mission, we will provide quarterly updates and here is some of the progress we have made within our first quarter.
Since October when the final version of WCAG 2.2 was published we’ve been focusing on audits and related fixes of various internal templates, themes and design systems to ensure the new success criteria are met by default. As part of this work we’ve also started to increase our AAA and best practice coverage in certain areas.
In our creative team, we’ve been focused on improvements to our creative themes and design system. In our engineering team, we’ve been auditing and improving Galaxies themes and Blog templates.
We’ve continued to roll out accessibility training to our internal teams. Our goal is that no matter the department you work in, you will have a high-level understanding of web accessibility and the tools to apply improvements to our everyday work. Training for the marketing team and periodic refresher training for the testing team is now complete.
As WCAG 2.2 changes happened, we ran internal drop-ins to ensure our team are educated and knowledgeable about the changes. We also launched a new Accessibility Champions group to ensure our team stay engaged and are advocates for accessibility across our company.
Additionally, we must train and educate our alliance partners. We’ve developed partner training to ensure our partners understand accessibility and have the accessible tools they need to support digital inclusion. We will roll this out in the new year.
We continue to work closely with our accessibility partners. Recently we attended TechShare Pro, run by our partner AbilityNet. This is an important conference to learn about the latest accessibility developments and technology, as well as collaborate with like-minded peers. We have been planning more activities to support our customers with a roundtable happening in January which will bring together a small group of customers to provide them with a space to work with other organisations driving towards the same accessibility goals. We have also signed up to Sponsor Axe-Con, a large virtual accessibility conference run by Deque. As a community support sponsor, our sponsorship fund of $2500 is donated to Black Girls Code, NV Access, and the Disability Visibility Project.
We are also building on our alliance partnership network with more coming soon.
For over two decades, since the inception of Jadu, our unwavering commitment to accessibility has been the driving force behind our journey. From the very first lines of code, we embedded accessibility into the very DNA of the Jadu platform. We've achieved remarkable milestones along the way, from pioneering the use of pure CSS on government websites to earning accolades for our design and UX innovations. However, our proudest moment is the audacious challenge we've set for ourselves. Accessibility isn't just a feature for us; it's a fundamental philosophy that guides every aspect of our work. Partnering with industry leaders like Silktide, AbilityNet, and Shaw Trust, we've tirelessly pursued innovative solutions to ensure that our platform is a beacon of accessibility for all users. Today, we aspire to put our customers at the forefront of accessibility, poised to realize our mission of becoming the world's most accessible digital platform.
Read our latest accessibility Whitepaper.