accessiBe's Public Roadmap

Last updated: October 11, 2023

The below post explains the reasoning and ideas behind the projects listed on the roadmap and should be read before reading the roadmap itself.

Everyone, whether it's a business owner, a large organization, a small company, an internal development team, a web designer, a solo developer, a webmaster working with a CMS with code access or without, and even those who don't know what code is, has different needs, abilities, and resources when it comes to applying accessibility practices into projects.

We believe that in order to help make the web accessible, which is our ultimate goal, there must be developments in many different aspects simultaneously. These include awareness, education, automation, technology, and training. But most importantly, we must enable everyone, regardless of their budget, knowledge, and skills, to participate in the global inclusion efforts by providing them with the right tools tailored to their specific business reality.

To achieve that, accessiBe is evolving into a full web accessibility solution-suite.

We believe that accessibility should be incorporated into the very core of business fundamentals. When building your online store, you need to think about accessibility from the design stage. When thinking about how it's best to build your service website and allow people to hire you through it, think about how blind users or people with motor impairments would interact with that website and its contents. This is plain and simple, the right and fair thing to do. This is what we like to call Native Accessibility.

Native accessibility, while being the right, fair, and most inclusion-promoting approach, is also the most difficult one to achieve because most businesses do not even have to go through a design stage. Instead, they use already built templates, plugins, and modules, alongside already built systems like Shopify or WiX. Of course, if those systems were to provide full web accessibility by default, that'd have been great, but it is technically not possible.

For those reasons, our approach to web accessibility is separated into two major technical approaches and a third approach that is more dedicated to awareness and education.

Native Accessibility (NativeAccess)

The first approach, as mentioned above, we call Native Accessibility. This approach, which ensures that every web project's infrastructure is accessible right from the beginning, is very suitable and should be adopted by larger businesses, engineers, engineering teams, web designers, and other professionals in the web ecosystem.

Integrated Accessibility

The second approach, we call Integrated Accessibility. This approach is suitable for small businesses that already have an existing website (and there are already over 350 million active websites in the US alone) or are building a new one but are using an already built template or a web platform that they don't have source code access to (like Shopify or WiX). It is also a good approach for website owners building their own websites that don't have engineers and web development experts on staff (or staff at all). Due to limited resources and budgets, small businesses cannot incorporate Native Accessibility into their projects.

The Integrated Accessibility approach aims to fix barriers that exist on a web project that was not designed with web accessibility practices incorporated from the beginning due to the reasons explained above. The goal of this approach is to eliminate as many barriers as possible and to make the experience as close to Native Accessibility as possible without forcing businesses into processes they can't go through or investing in projects they don't have the budgets for, like rebuilding all their projects and websites from scratch.

What does all of that mean in practice?

To put all those explanations into practice, we are building four different products. Two products for incorporating Native Accessibility into any web project, another for achieving Integrated Accessibility in existing or small businesses' websites, and two projects (one is an activity channel and the other is a product) for massively raising awareness and for education.

  1. The products and services for achieving and maintaining Native Accessibility are accessBoard and accessFlow. A full explanation regarding those products can be found on the roadmap.
  2. The product for achieving and maintaining Integrated Accessibility is accessNow, an evolution of the accessiBe product that exists today. More information is coming soon.
  3. The projects and products for raising awareness and educating businesses, designers, and developers regarding web accessibility and inclusion practices are accessHub and accessCampus. Both are explained in depth in the roadmap itself.

With those products and projects, we firmly believe that any business, regardless of its size, resources, budgets, and staff, can achieve and maintain the best possible accessibility practices for their business reality and therefore participate in the global efforts to promote inclusion and to make the web an accessible place for everybody, regardless of abilities.

Show Roadmap
  • accessFind

    DUE Q2 2022

    The internet is where we order groceries, buy clothes, pay rent, find an electrician, and so much more. Millions of people with disabilities struggle to accomplish these tasks because less than 3% of websites are accessible and, therefore, too difficult to find. accessFind is here to change that.

    accessFind is the world's first index showing ONLY accessible websites, built with the community, for everybody. With accessFind, users with disabilities have the opportunity to access hundreds of thousands of accessible websites they didn’t hear about before.

    Project status: finalizing
  • accessCampus

    DUE Q3 2022

    accessCampus is an online web-accessibility learning platform designed to take the complex world of web accessibility, disabilities, and WCAG, and simplify and streamline the learning experience. The platform will feature an interactive self-learning experience following a strict syllabus with videos, reading materials, lectures, WCAG qualifications, quizzes, and tests designed and delivered by accessibility experts and from users with various disabilities sharing their personal experiences.

    With accessCampus, professionals like web engineers, designers, and product managers can easily and effectively learn how web accessibility works, how to create Native Accessibility in their products and services, and how to maintain accessibility.

    Project status: progress
  • Helping Open-Source Web Infrastructures

    DUE Q4 2022

    Taking part in making the web infrastructures as accessible as possible by joining open-source web systems and communities and contributing from our resources, knowledge, and products to the future of the open web.

    Open source projects like WordPress and React and amazing tools that help drive web development forward. As part of our contribution, we'll provide the teams working on such open-source projects access to our development tools like accessBoard, accessFlow, and accessCampus so they can incorporate Native Accessibility into the frameworks and systems right from the infrastructure level.

    Project status: pending
  • accessFlow

    DUE Q1 2022

    accessFlow is an all-in-one web accessibility platform for engineering teams, solo developers, web designers, and accessibility remediation experts. The purpose of accessFlow is to be the dashboard for all of your projects' accessibility needs and provide the developers everything they need to ensure accessibility is always at its best. From monitoring, alerting, suggesting, and tracking to simplifying accessibility development with CI/CD pipelines and testing automation.

    Using accessFlow's User-Flow feature, companies can ensure that all their user-flows are accessible for various assistive technologies. If a flow isn't accessible, accessFlow will fail the version build (so companies won't ship inaccessible apps and code), alert the developers, and suggest fixes. Example of user-flows: (1) making a wire transfer using the bank's web/mobile application. (2) Sending a private message to a Slack channel member. (3) Paying rent in a property management app, etc.

    Lastly, accessFlow also provides professional services and best practices that are all designed to help professionals build applications and websites with NATIVE accessibility built into the development lifecycle and tech stacks.

    Project status: ready
  • accessHub - Education & Awareness

    DUE Q1 2022

    accessHub is a nonprofit initiative combining different activities that are all related to education regarding disability and accessiblity. The idea behind accessHub is to produce and combine many different resources on video and textual, alongside live webinars and lectures, made by leading disability-focused organizations and nonprofits alongside accessiBe, that are all designed to open the hearts and minds of businesses towards disabilities and accessibility.

    For example, the recent "Unstoppables" Nation-wide TV campaign accessiBe had run which was written and produced alongside and by people with disabilities and was featured and watched by dozens of millions of Americans.

    We believe that the right content produced and directed by people with disabilities, pushed with the right resources and guidance from accessiBe, can have a significant impact on businesses and the general population.

    Project status: ready
  • a11y Agency Acquisition

    DUE Q3 2021

    As part of evolving into a full web accessibility suite, we are looking to extend our knowledge, skills, and services by integrating a leading web accessibility consultancy, testing, and remediation agency into our current and future services and products.

    Project status: ready
  • 4th Accessibility Testing Focus Group

    DUE Q3 2021

    We believe in continuous improvement of user experience and therefore we are recruiting our fourth testing group in order to increase the number of tests for accessiBe’s current products and those planned for the future. The group will be made up of a team leader and four people with various disabilities.

    Project status: ready
  • Community Support Team

    DUE Q1 2021

    accessiBe is stepping up its support efforts and creating a dedicated team that aims to proactively search for accessiBe users, and connect with them to get feedback and provide technical support where the conversations happen. The team is made up of support, customer service, and accessibility experts.

    Project status: ready
  • Joining W3C

    DUE Q1 2021

    By joining the W3C we want to participate and contribute to the creation and improvement of web accessibility standards and guidelines. We want to take part in the global efforts to educate developers, designers, and others in the web ecosystem on the importance of accessibility and inclusion.

    Project status: ready