How to use the AbilityNet Digital Accessibility Maturity Model (DAMM)

Accessibility maturity is about knowing that you have everything you need to deliver accessible and inclusive websites and apps. 

Launched at TechShare Pro in November 2021, AbilityNet's Digital Accessibility Maturity Model (DAMM) is a free, open-source toolkit that helps you identify where your organisation is with digital accessibility, what you want to achieve and what to prioritise. It doesn't test your websites or apps, but looks instead at your organisation and asks questions about five key components of accessibility maturity - vision, leadership, capability, processes and procurement.

To help people get the most from the DAMM we offered a free webinar on Thursday 21 July at 1pm BST to people who wanted to use the toolkit.

Download your DAMM toolkit

Hosted by AbilityNet's Head of Digital Inclusion, Robin Christopherson and Senior Usability and Accessibility Consultant, Adi Latif, they explained how they use the DAMM with our clients and attendees had a chance to ask their DAMM-related questions.

How to use the AbilityNet DAMM - AbilityNet webinar slides via SlideShare

What can our DAMM do for your organisation?

During the webinar, we shared a short video review about AbilityNet's DAMM from Mimouna Mahdaoui, the Senior Manager of DE&I Strategy at Totaljobs / StepStone group so attendees can discover how other organisations have used and benefited from the DAMM.

Skyscanner, the Travel planning website, have also worked with us to implement the Digital Accessibility Maturity Model.

Find out about how Skyscanner used the DAMM.

Webinar FAQs

The slide deck, transcript and recording is now available on this page.

Find out more in our webinars FAQs and sign up for our next free webinar in our AbilityNet Live webinar series.

You can find an archive of our webinars on our website and we also offer paid role-based accessibility training.
 

Q&As

This webinar lasted 60 minutes and included an opportunity to pose questions to our DAMM experts. The panel were able to answer many questions from attendees during the live session, which you can find by watching the webinar playback or accessing the transcript. Here are some additional questions we weren't able to answer at the time:

Q: As a freelancer I work in organisations who are not necessarily thinking of this, have you any tips about opening up a conversation with them? 

Robin, Adi and Mark: The business case for accessibility, with free downloadable summary on our website, is a good place to start, either as something to share with the people in the organisations you work with or to give you the information you need to talk about it with them.
There are also many other useful resources online by searching for ‘Accessibility business case’.

Q: We started our digital startup purposely as all neurodivergents to build an ideal creative space for us using shared lived experience to design tech. But perhaps our focus could miss other areas of disability which is such a broad church in terms of supporting all the different strengths of other disabilities. How do disabled people keep up with all the other different and specific abilities beyond their personal lived experience? 

Robin, Adi and Mark: There are many free factsheets on our website that provide information on tech and the full range of disabilities. It’s also worth noting that the guidelines like WCAG (for web) and their equivalents for iOS/Android etc are pan-disability, but if it is about lived experience that you would like to know more about, then you can reach out to organisations like RNIB or Scope for example. You can also find end users to talk to, follow influencers on social media, or attend a AbilityNet workplace training session on lived experiences.

Q: How to measure the maturity of your accessibility team?

Robin, Adi and Mark: If you use the DAMM you will get the broader picture of accessibility in your organisation - of which your team is, of course, an essential part. You could create a survey to send round to your team asking what their accessibility knowledge, skills and tools/checklists are and this will prove a useful element in being able to evaluate yourself against the DAMM. Also note that sites like www.webaim.org have lots of useful info on accessibility and how to check against the guidelines.

Useful resources

• Learn more information about DAMM
• You can find out more information about our guided assessment - paid service for the DAMM
• Learn more about AbilityNet Digital Accessibility Services
• Keep up to date with accessibility and inclusion news with the AbilityNet newsletter