Most designers and companies know it is important to create accessible content for their learners. However, often a company only has only a few experts that know how to create accessible content and those experts are in charge of teaching and training everyone else in the company on how to do so. When the responsibility of creating accessible content falls on a small number of individuals in the company, it is hard to go above and beyond for our learners because the majority of individuals in the company would just focus on meeting the minimum requirements. What if there is a way to disperse the responsibility of creating accessible content across the company and have individuals organically take ownership over creating accessible materials?

In this session you will learn about effective ways to create an accessibility team at your company. You will hear about the challenges and successes from real-life examples of team formation at different institutions. You will also learn about the common reasons for why there may not be buy-in and support to developing accessible content. In addition to the lack of institutional buy-in, this session will also cover what challenges subject matter experts typically face when creating accessible content, and how to address their needs. You will leave this session knowing how to address common challenges, how to select meaningful members to start a team, how to organically spread accessibility knowledge across the company, and how to explain the importance of going above and beyond for our learners to your company executives.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why creating accessible content is important for your learners
• How to address why there may not be buy-in to create accessible content beyond the minimum requirements
• How to select meaningful members to create an accessibility team
• How to organically spread accessibility knowledge and expertise throughout the company with your accessibility team
• How to talk to executives about the importance of creating an accessibility team to create a culture that embraces the development of accessible learning content