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Attitudes to Digital Accessibility 2022 survey report - key findings
Learn about the general state of digital accessibility awareness and activity among global businesses by digesting the fascinating results of AbilityNet's annual Attitudes to Digital Accessibility survey.
Introduction
Our survey includes feedback from more than 447 professionals worldwide and the results show a mixed picture. There are a lot of encouraging improvements in many areas, but many organisations still face barriers of all kinds.
It's good to see that there are more positive responses than negative across the survey, and there's a general picture of digital accessibility finally being on the agenda for senior leadership in a majority of organisations.
But there are several areas which raise concerns about how deeply this commitment reaches, especially when looking at where accessibility fits into processes. A low priority is given to procurement, for example, which remains an Achilles Heel for many of the organisations we work with at AbilityNet.
The survey structure reflects AbilityNet's Digital Accessibility Maturity Model. This simple, five-part model helps build a picture of current strengths and weaknesses and identify a roadmap for next steps and improvements.
Based on this model this report includes suggestions for next steps which we hope can help all organisations continue to progress.
We hope you find this snapshot as fascinating as we did.
Mark Walker, AbilityNet
Key findings of Attitudes to Digital Accessibility survey 2022
Respondents to the survey were asked to feedback on five key areas:
- Leadership
- Motivations
- Processes
- Capability
- Procurement
1. Leadership – vision, values and optimism
Committed leadership and a clear vision about digital accessibility were the two strongest performing characteristics. Positive change is coming from the top. Respondents from executive and senior level roles prioritised accessibility more highly than those in more operational roles.
Leaders were also more positive than managers and non-managerial respondents in their perception of their organisation’s business performance and commitment to digital accessibility. They may be optimistic about how fast the business has taken on their vision and commitment, and what is needed to deliver on it.
2. Motivations – risk avoidance trumps business value
The main motivator for accessibility is legal requirements, followed by brand values and reputation. There is still relatively low understanding and appreciation of the importance of digital accessibility to achieve core business objectives such as revenue maximisation, customer or employee satisfaction and retention, product lifecycle cost management and innovation.
The consequence of this is that time and resources are often under allocated. Many of those in accessibility-oriented roles are part of small teams managing heavy workloads championing accessibility to the wider organisation and working on many products. They often felt constrained by tight time and resource constraints.
There is also limited use of inclusive usability testing and engagement that offers organisations more specifically valuable industry, brand and ideas and improvement opportunities
3. Capability – unstructured skills development
Accessibility skill development is overly reliant in many businesses on self-initiative as it is not built into standard required and supported training and role competencies. Many respondents noted that they need to find information and opportunities for developing role-relevant accessibility skills with limited or no formal or centralised guidance.
Although confidence is quite high, especially in roles highly related to accessibility, skills are in scarce supply across the business putting pressure on those with them and limiting their ability to influence as widely as they and the business would wish.
4. Processes – lack of consistency and efficiency
There is significant differentiation between organisations and experiences in terms of accessibility processes. There is an opportunity for development or improvement of documented, clear and well-maintained accessibility processes.
This would embed accessibility into the product lifecycle more consistently and efficiently, crystalise learnings for reuse, protect the organisation from losing expertise when key team members leave, and ensure more consistent and efficient delivery across digital products, departments and roles.
5. Procurement – at risk of buying problems
Only 1 in 3 respondents said guidance existed within their organisation to help them consider whether external services would be accessible when integrated into their business or included in a website, app or other digital assets.
This provides the risk of an open “side door” to inaccessible experiences through vendors’ products.
Chart 1. Overall digital accessibility maturity in 2022: Performance of organisation across key areas of work
Respondents were asked to rate their organisation’s maturity in relation to statements regarding procurement, capability, processes, leadership, and vision.
- Procurement: My organisation ensures that purchasing practices and decisions help us maintain or progress our digital accessibility objectives
- Capability: The organisation helps individuals to develop the skills they need to deliver its digital accessibility vision
- Processes: Digital accessibility is embedded throughout product or service development lifecycle in my organisation
- Leadership: The leadership team in my organisation is committed to improving digital accessibility
- Vision: My organisation has a clearly stated vision about digital accessibility
Access the long description for Chart 1: Performance of organisation across key areas of work
Base: All respondents completing the survey sections; Procurement (262), Capability (372), Processes (387), Leadership (402), and Vision (422).
Further report highlights
The good outweighs the bad
For every category there were more positive respondents than negative ones who disagreed with the survey statements above. Leadership was the most positive / least negative and procurement the least positive. Procurement was almost evenly balanced between those that agreed to some extent and those who disagreed to some extent.
Significant opportunities to improve
Less than a quarter of respondents agreed strongly to any of the statements and, except for leadership, the agree strongly or slightly was always below 50%, indicating opportunities for significant improvement across all areas. Except for leadership (lower) and processes (higher) approx 1 in 6 people strongly disagreed to each statement.
Leadership and vision
Half of the respondents agreed that there is a clearly stated vision and just over half feel that there is commitment from leaders to progress digital accessibility. Leadership commitment also had the lowest rate of respondents who didn’t agree with the statement, showing greater consistency across respondents, roles, levels and organisations.
Processes
The statement about processes embedded throughout the lifecycle drew the greatest split between those who agree and disagree with this statement (40% agree and 37% disagree to some extent with the rest neutral or having not responded to this). This shows the greatest differentiation across participants as some businesses are much more mature than others in this and some roles better supported than others.
Capability
Just under half (46%) agreed to some extent that their organisation helps them develop skills. However, the majority of these are “to some extent” with just 1 in 6 people agreeing strongly, the same number who disagree strongly. This shows that opportunities for skills development are still very mixed.
Procurement
This elicited the lowest level of agreement with the statement. Less than 1 in 3 (33%) respondents agreed to some extent and almost the same number (30%) disagreed to some extent. This also had the greatest number of non-respondents to the question, as not all roles engage with procurement.
Breakdown of respondents: industry, sector, role
Respondents came from a range of industries, sectors and roles, including both technical and non-technical roles and geographies.
A total of 447 respondents have been included in the full dataset.
Centrality of digital accessibility to their role
62% of respondents stated that digital accessibility was a significant part in their work and 36% said that it featured occasionally in their work
Seniority
18% of respondents (82 in total) described themselves as Executive/C-suite/Senior Leaders, 29% as Managers and 50% as having Non-managerial roles.
Organisation type
53% of respondents worked within government/public bodies (including military, health or education), 33% were working in businesses (for profit) and 12% in charities, voluntary sector organisations or social enterprises
Organisation scale
78% of respondents worked in larger organisations (over 250 employees) and 18% were working in SMEs.
Organisational location
Over 65% of respondents worked in UK headquartered organisations, 10% worked in the USA and the remainder were drawn from companies headquartered in a very wide range of locations across Europe, the Americas and Asia/Pacific. Organisations headquartered in 26 countries were represented in total.
This survey is attitudinal only.
Our annual survey was made available from 20 September to 3 October 2022, and was designed by Open Inclusion and disseminated by AbilityNet, Open Inclusion and partner organisations globally.
Find out more about the survey results report methodology.
Contact Annie Mannion at AbilityNet for questions about the report.
Access all areas of the report: