I am an associate member of the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance (AIA) and was sent the following request. I am not involved day to day in the development process so I cannot respond. I have looked at the survey and I believe the information collected will be of great value and therefore urge any of my readers who are involved in the development process to respond. There is a deadline of 29 August so please find 15 minutes ASAP.

I will report to you on the results when they become available.

TO:  All Professionals Involved in the Development Process

The purpose of this confidential survey is to better understand the needs of and obstacles faced by the development community when it comes to incorporating accessibility into the development lifecycle.

The end goal is that all deliverables (commercial electronic and information technology hardware or software, websites, in-house applications, documents, etc) are useable by persons with disabilities.

This survey is being conducted by ATIA and the Accessibility Interoperability Alliance Division of ATIA.  ATIA is working to find ways to support developers through a partnership with the Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy.  The objective of the survey is to identify obstacles and solutions to address the needs identified.  Results of this research will be reported at an aggregate level, and names of organizations, if provided, will not be identified when reporting findings.

Approximately one in six Americans—nearly 50 million people—is living with disabilities.  Worldwide that number is estimated to be 15-20% of every country's population: There are at least 650 million people with disabilities worldwide. [UN Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2007].

We ask that you respond to this survey and pass it along to other colleagues within your organization who play a role in the development process so that we can identify the clear priorities and the best ways to support your efforts to build accessibility processes.  Also, please feel free to pass this along to anyone outside your organization who could also provide valuable input on this topic.

This survey should take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete and will provide valuable insight to advance the goal of access for all.  Please respond by end of day Sunday, August 29th.

Link to online survey 

If you have problems with this link and want to download a Word version of the survey to email to us:

Download Word version of survey - then email the completed survey to aiaadmin@atia.org.  

Thank you for taking the time to fill this out.  If you have any questions about this survey, please contact: aiaadmin@atia.org