To advance our commitment to accessibility, Forum One recently became members of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), a global accessibility professional association promoting and improving accessible digital and physical environments.

IAAP advocates for the inclusive design and creation of accessible products, content, services, and spaces to ensure no one is left behind due to a physical, sensory, cognitive, health or psychological related impairment.

Why Accessibility Matters

For many years, we’ve written about our commitment to helping mission-driven partners achieve their accessibility goals. Back in 2020, with the post Accessible Design is Good Design: Humanizing Section 508 & Accessibility, we explored not only the requirements side of accessibility, making sure that websites pass 508 compliance standards, but why truly understanding and embracing accessibility empowers all users:

“Stop thinking of Section 508 and accessibility as some troublesome, annoying box you need to check, and start thinking of it in terms of helping human beings. Think of it in terms of doing the right thing. This is a moral issue, a humanist issue. It’s important. It means something. If you are out there doing a job you don’t really think makes a difference in the big scheme of things, but has within it the possibility of making your website accessible, you can indeed make a difference. Your job is important. Go make a difference in someone’s life. Make your website accessible.“

Last year, Forum One’s Accessibility Lead Jeanette Stair presented at Drupal GovCon on accessibility. As all publicly-funded web projects must comply with accessibility standards, this is a big topic at the conference. Jeanette’s presentation, and the blog post adapted from it, walked partners through the process of evolving accessibility in existing projects, shifting mindsets from “passing” at launch to a continuous process of prioritizing accessibility. 

Today, our membership in IAAP is just one more concrete step we’re making to ensure our organizational culture and strategies support accessibility for our own internal team, our clients, and the external audiences they all reach.

Learn more

Want to understand more about accessibility? Dive into our back catalog of posts on the topic:

• A Content Editor’s Guide to Writing Good, Meaningful Alt Text
• Demystifying the Cost of Accessible Websites: Is Accessibility Worth the Commitment?
• Three Steps to Get Started with Accessibility
• Design Series: Ensuring Accessibility
• Best Practices: Creating Alt Text for Social Media
• An Accessibility & Inclusion Checklist for Virtual Events
• 5 Things You Can Do to Make the Web a More Inclusive Place