The problem

Water is an essential service for everyone, regardless of disability, limitation or impairment. Everyone has the right to access information and services when it comes to their water account at Greater Western Water (GWW).

Accessibility was introduced to my team by the then UX Designer (Kobi Masterson) before she left to pursue an Accessibility Analyst role elsewhere. Once I saw the importance of digital accessibility I felt it was my duty to pick up the baton and run with it.

City West Water (CWW) (one of the entities that became GWW) had previously not focused on accessibility. The CWW website wouldn’t meet WCAG standards and generally, digital accessibility compliance wasn’t tested or adhered to. CWW was set to integrate with Western Water and would eventually need a new website. This was the perfect time to instigate and champion accessibility at this new GWW entity.

The solution

I knew early on that if my team (website product owners at the time) wanted to implement WCAG standards and begin auditing the website, we needed a strong foundation to anchor this work back to. It was clear that we needed an accessibility policy to give “accessibility at GWW” firm legs to stand on.

So… I started writing GWW’s first-ever Accessibility policy.

Writing GWW’s first-ever Accessibility Policy

What’s in the policy?

In early development, it was clear that the policy should extend beyond digital-only. GWW aims to become an “employer of choice” - so to live and breathe this aim they need to ensure that once people are employed, they can carry out their duties regardless of any disability, impairment or limitation.

Even though GWW had Diversity and Inclusion policies, these didn’t speak to ‘people (physical)’ or ‘digital accessibility,’ so the policy took shape with two focuses:

Focus 1: People

The ‘people’ focus of the policy is about:

facilitating inclusive attitudes and behaviours to eliminate discrimination
facilitating access to reasonable adjustments
planning for physical accessibility.

Focus 2: Digital

The ‘digital’ focus of the policy is about:

compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA
producing and/or procuring accessible digital assets
working with accessible Third-Party vendors.

Policy Development Process

The whole process, from the initial draft to board approval, took about 12 months. An integration of City West Water and Western Water slowed the project down (as other policies were deemed ‘Day 1 critical’ and were approved as a priority). The policy went through the following process of development:

initial policy draft
circulating the draft with the Diversity & Inclusion Officer for further buy-in
campaigning for Executive Leadership Team (ELT) buy-in and securing ELT-level policy ownership
internal review and implementation of feedback
engaging with the Australian Network on Disability for an external subject-matter-expert review and feedback implementation
another round of internal review (specifically with our board member Llewlyn Praine who has a sighted disability) with the implementation of final feedback
submission to and approval by the GWW board.

Whilst the (12-month) policy approval process was in train, I knew that the biggest challenge was yet to come - how do we get an organisation that historically hasn’t focused on accessibility to start caring and doing accessibility work?

Taking GWW on the journey

Accessibility is a journey. In a large organisation, it’s essentially a behavioural change piece. People have to understand what accessibility is, why they need to care, and how they can play their part in making accessible work.

So… I went about helping to facilitate building internal knowledge around accessibility for company-wide buy-in.

Creating “How-to” resources

There are ways to make accessible documents, websites and content etc, but unless you know how you’re not likely to do it.

I created basic “How-to” resource guides for the organisation to start using to implement small changes into their daily document creation practice. Guides included:

Creating accessible documents - Word
Creating accessible documents - PowerPoint
Creating accessible documents - PDFs
Creating accessible audio and video media
General tips for better writing and writing for accessibility.

I wanted to help our people make this transition to a new way of thinking and working as smoothly as possible.

Extracts from the Accessibility "How-to guides" I created.

Intranet information pages

I built two pages in our SharePoint Intranet. The first is for general information about the ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of accessibility and the second page has links to the ‘How-to’ resource guides I created.

I also turned some of these guides into 15-minute videos, to cater for different learning types. Links to the videos were also uploaded to this intranet page.

Screen captures of the internal intranet pages I created about accessibility.

Hosting information sessions and drop-ins

When the business was ready (after the integration), it was time to launch accessibility org-wide.

I hosted an Accessibility information session with over 340+ staff attending to hear about the ‘what, why and how’ of accessibility. In this session, I launched the Intratnet pages so staff could continue on after the session and start their accessibility journey right away with their own documents.

Various slides from a PowerPoint presentation I created about accessibility.

To keep the conversation and momentum going I have since hosted drop-in-sessions, where people can troubleshoot their document accessibility issues with me. There are plans to extend the sessions to be more software-specific (individual Word and PowerPoint sessions etc) in the future.

Facilitating GWW’s first-ever Accessibility web audit

As the sole designer of the new consolidated GWW website, I was working to ensure my designs were WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.

Once our site was built (by external developers - ICON Agency) we wanted to flex the policy and we requested GWW’s first-ever website accessibility audit.

I researched auditing organisations and facilitated an early conversation between TTC Global and GWW. TTC Global was the most appealing because they offer follow-up support after their audits to help organisations implement changes and understand identified issues.

TTC Global’s audit garnered a 75% pass rate, which they said was impressive. We requested critical issues be rectified before go-live and any other non-critical warning issues were placed in a backlog to be picked up post go live.

You can read more about my experience with accessibility at GWW in this TTC Global interview blog.

The outcome

GWW now has an Accessibility Policy and a future foundation to focus on engaging in accessible activities and practices.
Accessibility awareness and thinking are really starting to grow at GWW:
- In more and more project meetings (for example, the new Billings and Collections system and Self-Service Portal projects) there are conversations about accessibility and requests for audits before systems go live. These conversations and requests never took place prior to this accessibility uplift work.
- More and more people are talking about making their customer-facing documents accessible before uploading the to the website. Again, these conversations never took place prior to this accessibility uplift work.

My philosophy is that accessibility is a journey. You’re never going to know everything at the start or be 100% accessible straight away. All you need to do is start - start learning about accessibility, start talking about it, start doing it and eventually an accessibility culture starts to grow. GWW’s accessibility journey is in the early stages, but the seed is starting to sprout roots.

I have since upskilled in my own accessibility journey and obtained a Professional Certificate in Web Accessibility from the University of South Australia (Nov 2022).

Leading an accessibility uplift at Greater Western Water

The who

My role