Accessibility questions? Get in contact: george@goodwally.ca. The redesign of scotiabank.com presented an ideal opportunity to truly embed accessibility into the project and management processes. This is presentation 1 of 2. There are two presentations in this series and in both presentations we highlight the most important lessons we learned, best practices that worked and the challenges we faced and how to overcome them. However, they do complement each other: - the 1st presentation speaks to the governance, policies and management process around the project - the 2nd presentation describes the accessibility tasks undertaken at each SDLC phase You'll learn how we gained participation from various stakeholders, shared best practices and built accessibility skills throughout the team. The accessibility team at Scotia was engaged from the very beginning and collaborated with many stakeholders and as a result took the opportunity to build an accessible framework from day 1 by injecting the accessibility requirements and best practices throughout the entire Software Development Lifecycle Cycle (SDLC). -- Objectives The redesign of a large, national website is a complex undertaking. It is also an opportunity to do accessibility right from the beginning. The objective of the session is to share lessons learned and practical tips about how to successfully integrate accessibility into a large project. This included: - the ability to work with multiple teams in parallel or sequentially - working on standards and best practices with the planning team - working on technical solutions with the development team -- Some questions that we answered: - What is the role of the accessibility team in a large project? Does the role need to adapt and how? - What are the accessibility policies & standards that apply? - How do you manage and communicate accessibility standards and technical solutions between the various management, design, development and testing teams? - Do you have to follow WCAG 2 by the letter? What’s the alternative? We will provide insight into policy, planning, technical solutions and best practices that we hope will be of great benefit and use to the accessibility community.

1. Accessibility Integration in a Global Customer Website
– A Success Story
Part 1: Governance, policies & project management
Part 2: SDLC processes, solutions & best practices
Enabling Solutions & Pina D’Intino
Monica Ackermann
Support Management George Zamfir
#accessconf - The Accessibility Conference - University of Guelph

2. Meet Scotiabank’s Accessibility Team. Hi!
Enabling Solutions & Support Management (ESSM)
Pina D’Intino PMP, ITIL Certified
Senior Manager
Wilma Groen
Monica Ackermann P.Eng., MA
Accessibility Project Lead
Rajesh Duggal
George Zamfir B.Sc.
Accessibility Technical Analyst
© 2012 Scotiabank

3. Agenda
• ESSM Roles & Responsibilities
• Scotiabank’s Accessibility Strategy
• The scotiabank.com Redesign Project
• Why is this particular project successful?
• Important Project Details
• What steps were taken towards accessibility?
• How was accessibility integrated at each phase?
4. Lessons Learned. Challenges. Conclusion
5. Q & A
© 2012 Scotiabank

4. 1. ESSM Roles & Responsibilities – Focus on IT Accessibility
© 2012 Scotiabank

5. 2. Scotiabank's Accessibility Strategy – 4-Phase Roadmap
There are key recommendations for each step. For example, Step 2 includes:
– Adopt existing or define organizational accessibility standards
– Obtain executive commitment
– Establish a network of advocates, champions, and create a Scotiability Council
– Identify a pilot set of applications to assess for compliance assessment and remediation
– Integrate accessibility into the management system, set goals & measurements
– Integrate accessibility into the development and User Acceptance Testing processes
– Develop and roll out awareness & education plans, and reference resources (e.g. portal)
– Update the assistive technologies & support available to employees
© 2012 Scotiabank

6. 2. Scotiabank's Accessibility Strategy – Organizational Approach
1. Executive sponsorship
2. Define an accessibility roadmap
3. Establish a competency centre
4. Consistent application of standards
5. Clear guidelines and conformance criteria
6. Clear exception and deviation protocols
7. Measuring your progress
8. Reporting mechanisms
9. Auditing and reporting processes
10. Repeatable and sustainable processes
11. Sign-offs
© 2012 Scotiabank

7. 2. Scotiabank's Accessibility Strategy – Standards & Regulations
Global trends accelerating market demand for accessibility
Select U.S. legal inquiries and litigation since 2008
Increasingly vocal
consumers and advocacy
hold organizations
In Marketplace accountable
 Ontario AODA (2005) with ICT implementation phase beginning in 2012.
Evolving legislation
 Federal CLF 2.0
drives accessibility into
private sector and  Quebec and Manitoba standards initiatives
Canada onto the Web  North American market harmonization – air travel, telecom, selling to USA
 U.S. Government ‘refreshes’ and expands Americans with Disabilities Act and
Section 508 of U.S. Rehabilitation Act (in progress)
Accessibility standards  U.S. 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act requires captions
apply to public and for video on the Internet (2010)
private sectors  U.S. Dept. of Transportation – FAA rules will regulate Canadian air carriers
In North America accessibility (proposed 2012 regulations) – web and kiosk
 U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – First universal
Governments adopt framework for ICT accessibility [Signed by 149 countries; Ratified by 103]
international
 Progressive public policies and government mandates for compliance with
conventions and Worldwide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in
technology standards Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Netherlands, U.S., U.K., and others
for inclusion  Rapid international standard adoption in other emerging markets (e.g., India)
Globally
© 2012 Scotiabank

8. 2. Scotiabank's Accessibility Strategy – In Canada: What is the Law?
Federal
– 1982 – Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Ontario Human Rights Code “Duty to
Accommodate”; applies to all;
– 2007 – Canada signs the UN convention for Persons with Disabilities;
– 2009 – Canada ratifies the UN convention for Persons with Disabilities “Countries undertake
universal design in the development of standards and guidelines as well as research on and the use
of universally designed goods, services, equipment and facilities”; applies to all.
Provincial
– 1975 – Ontario Regulation for Advanced Building Code for Disability Rights “Includes ramps, wider
entrances, etc. - amended in 2006”; applies to all;
– 2001 – Ontarians with Disabilities Act (ODA) “Provides guidelines and recommendations for the
removal of barriers for Persons with Disabilities”;
– 2005 – Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) “Strengthens the ODA - provides
timelines and standards and ensures a barrier free Ontario by 2025”;
– 2008 – Customer Services proposed Standards became law - must be fully compliant as of January
1, 2012; applies to customers.
Built Environment: applies to all - no current timeline; under government review
The Integrated Accessibility Standards harmonize the following 3 standards into a common
compliance framework and became law July 1, 2011:
Information and Communication: applies to employees and customers - with a 3 - 10 year
implementation window
Employment: applies to employees - with a 5 year implementation window
Transportation: applies to all - with a 5 year implementation window
© 2012 Scotiabank

9. The scotiabank.com Redesign Project
Why is this particular project very successful?
Project Considerations & Key Drivers
What steps were taken towards accessibility?
How was accessibility integrated at each phase?

10. 3. Why This Particular Project? Considerations
Project Considerations
• The business team had solid accessibility awareness prior to engaging us
All the years of hard work on awareness paid off
• Immediate buy-in
Early in the planning phase the management team embedded the
accessibility work effort and resources in the project plan
• Financial backing
The business team had high overall expectations (not just accessibility) and
the budget was there to do accessibility early.
• It makes good business sense not to exclude potential customers
Also, it sets a good precedent for a successful accessibility project!
© 2012 Scotiabank

11. 3. scotiabank.com Redesign – Project Stakeholders
Teams Involved Internal Clients
Digital Marketing All major business lines
owner, project manager Multiple content owners
Vendor External Scope
design, HTML prototype
Improved customer experience
CMS Team
back-end content management Unified design & branding
Focus on Information Architecture
Copy Deck & Translation
Goal-based navigation
ESSM
accessibility, testing
Internal Scope
Others
advisory, management, dev One platform for all editors
integration, etc.
Consolidate dispersed micro-sites & content
Reusability of templates, tools and functionality
© 2012 Scotiabank

12. 3. scotiabank.com Redesign – What steps were taken? (PDM)
Accessibility in the Project Delivery Methodology (PDM)
Accessibility is part of the project development methodology (PDM) with checkpoints
in the business case, design, development, testing and release processes.
© 2012 Scotiabank

13. 3. scotiabank.com Redesign – What steps were taken? (cont’d)
Initial planning meeting with the project owner (business line)
The goal was two-fold:
- for them to understand the accessibility internal standards & requirements
- for ESSM to understand their management & development processes
Accessibility training and education with all teams involved
-Identified all the teams involved & scheduled individual meetings with each
to understand how they worked and what processes they followed.
- Also, a full-day training was scheduled early on with all the teams involved
in the project to establish a baseline for accessibility.
Process for accessibility was embedded into the project plan
In order to avoid doing accessibility “after the fact” time was allocated at
each Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) phase for accessibility
evaluations, remediation and (re)test.
© 2012 Scotiabank

14. 3. scotiabank.com Redesign – How was accessibility integrated?
From the beginning we identified that we have to embed accessibility early and
look at all the phases that impact content, design, navigation and user interaction
Project Phase Accessibility Action
1. Planning Accessibility compliance & checklist
2. Wireframes & Design Visual logic, navigation, readability
3. HTML Prototype Testing Full-suite accessibility evaluation & solutioning
4. Steady State Maintenance, content management, remediation
© 2012 Scotiabank

15. 3. How was accessibility integrated? Phase 1 – Planning
1. Planning
• Accessibility compliance requirements
• Accessibility standards and internal & external checklists
• Identify and plan for any technology or business constrains
• Estimate accessibility work effort and include it to the project’s
overall timeline and the project plan.
• Start accessibility early (with wireframes) and iterate often; fairly
more agile process with some phases overlapping.
© 2012 Scotiabank

16. 3. How was accessibility integrated? Phase 2 – Design Templates
2. Wireframes & Design Templates
• Accessible design: color contrast, UI elements positioning
• Visual order: does the elements order make sense?
• Intuitive navigation: a lot of navigation menus; consistent behavior
• Readability: evaluate minimum font size, typeface, headings, etc.
• Structure: semantic structure emerged from evaluation
• Patterns and common UI elements emerged from the templates;
decision was made to break testing and evaluations into global UI
elements and content.
Tip: accessibility evaluations at this stage are not very time-consuming
or extensive however they’re very important in identifying
potential issue down the road.
© 2012 Scotiabank

17. 3. How was accessibility integrated? Template Example
Header
Design
Main Content Template
Vertical
Nav Menu
“Fat” Footer
© 2012 Scotiabank

18. 3. How was accessibility integrated? Phase 3 – HTML Prototype
3. HTML Prototype
• By this stage the work done on previous stages should pay off at
least on a basic level: alt text, semantic structure, etc;
• Confirm that all accessibility updates from the wireframes and
design phases were implemented and there’s no regression.
• Manual testing for critical issues that are to be addressed first
• Full suite of evaluations:
– Keyboard Testing for functionality and keyboard focus
– Automated Testing: Deque Worldspace & FireEyes
– Manual Testing & Code Inspection: various plugins, FireBug
– AT Testing with actual users; JAWS, ZoomText, Dragon
Tip: Not all accessibility issues are the same, prioritize by impact to user.
© 2012 Scotiabank

19. 3. How was accessibility integrated? Phase 4 – Steady State
4. Steady State
• Testing on the live website, spot-checked pages that spanned
across all design templates.
• Challenges around the accessibility of new content – centralized
CMS in place but many teams make many updates;
• Work with the Digital Marketing team to have better controls over
the content that gets posted and / or work with the CMS team to
enforce some accessibility rules right into CMS back-end
• Future goal – measure accessibility level over time: regular full
website automated testing and reporting on existing content but
also on the new content;
© 2012 Scotiabank

20. scotiabank.com Redesign – Lessons Learned
Early acceptance & good planning
Relentless work to champion accessibility and raise awareness translated into early
acceptance. Good planning ensured there’s time for complete accessibility evaluations;
Breaking the mountain into small hills
Divide and conquer – small, manageable pieces, don’t get lost in the breadth of details.
Prioritization – “yes, let’s start with the framework issues first before we fix widgets”
ESSM - single point of contact:
consistent approach to solutioning.
80 / 20 rule
Aimed for high accessibility level in most cases but not for perfect; learned to compromise
and sometimes mitigate where resulted in less stress on the other teams.
Early feedback & solutioning
Easy and digestible format and often very custom to the team’s expertise (code vs design)

21. scotiabank.com Redesign – Technical Challenges
Ongoing technology changes
Users access and will access the web with an ever-increasing number of devices. Web
standards seem to be in a continuous flux.
“We’ll do it in phase 2”
Sometimes we will, sometimes we won’t, either way, it gets complicated.
Maintaining accessibility after launch
1. Due to timelines and priorities code fixes (including accessibility ones) may be taken out
to address any release issues. A remediation process should be in place.
2. Content updates can dilute accessibility on otherwise perfectly accessible pages.
Content management is critical in a distributed environment with several authors / editors

22. scotiabank.com Redesign – Resource Challenges
Saying “Yes” to everything
“There’s a new template that needs to be evaluated for accessibility BY TOMORROW”. It’s
not that simple, we have to test, evaluate, solution, re-test, sign-off.
Resource turnover and ongoing education
With new techniques and updated or emerging standards (e.g. HTML5, mobile, touch
interfaces, etc.) ongoing education is a challenge that is exacerbated with staff turnovers.
The perfect solution that we want VS the solution that is possible
Or in other words making compromises. We strive for the perfect solution but getting to
the negotiation table and making some compromises is part of the long-term solution that
stretches beyond the project at hand.
© 2012 Scotiabank

23. Possibility, Opportunity, Action!
Possibility…
... to get in early and truly embed accessibility in the project plan
Opportunity…
… to educate many internal teams hands-on. Bonus: set a precedent
Action…
Get acceptance early. Engage ALL teams. Ongoing education. Break
the mountain into small hills. Help and guide teams over the first
(few) hills.
© 2012 Scotiabank

24. scotiabank.com Redesign – Q & A
THANK YOU!
Time for Q & A !

25. scotiabank.com Redesign – Summary of Part 2
NEXT
Part 2: SDLC processes, solutions & best practices
BUT FIRST
We take a break!

26. scotiabank.com Redesign – Appendix
Appendix

27. Appendix / Resources
Useful Website Stats – Monthly Unique Visitors
~ 3.7 million

28. Appendix / Resources
Useful Website Stats – Browsers Distribution
1. Internet Explorer 8 - 27.6%
2. Internet Explorer 9 - 19.9%
3. Internet Explorer 7.0 - 10.9%
4. Safari (unknown v.) - 5.2%
5. Chrome 16.0 - 3.8%

29. Appendix / Resources
Useful Website Stats – Screen Resolution
1. 1280 x 768 – 19.8%
2. 1024 x 768 – 17.6%
3. 1280 x 800 – 14.8%
4. 1280 x 1024 – 8.6%
5. 1400 x 864 – 7.3%

30. 4. Integrating Accessibility – Scope – Templates (1)
A Few Page Templates – to rule them all (pages)

31. 4. Integrating Accessibility – Scope – Templates (2)
A Few Page Templates – to rule them all (pages)

32. 4. Integrating Accessibility – Scope – Templates (3)
A Few Page Templates – to rule them all (pages)

33. 4. Integrating Accessibility – Scope – Templates (4)
A Few Page Templates – to rule them all (pages)

34. 4. Integrating Accessibility – Scope – Dynamic UI
Dynamic UI Elements – used throughout the site
Repository: any department can use them in their content
We had to deal with them early and at a template level rather
than later and handle every small variation
Selectors, Flip tiles, Calculators, Info Pop-Ups
Accessibility Integration in a Global Customer Website – A Success Story

35. 4. Integrating Accessibility – Scope – Main Content
Main Content
• Lots of content!
To move the content into
the new design each
department submitted a list
of the pages they owned –
there were thousands.
• Lots of it was not in scope!
We decided early that we
can’t evaluate all of it – it
would be a project on its
own with each respective
department
• However, we did evaluate
important flows, pages that
have dynamic UI elements
and most used templates
Accessibility Integration in a Global Customer Website – A Success Story