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How we work

The method is the promise

"Nothing about us without us" is not a wall slogan: it is a process with verifiable steps. These are the five that everything the institute designs, builds and publishes goes through.

A person's hands read the refreshable braille display of a Focus 14 Blue device held on their lap
Photo: Stefanie Loos / re:publica — CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

  1. We start with people

    No project is born from a technology catalog. It is born from a need voiced by a community or an institution, and the problem is defined with them.

    Before writing a line of code we ask who is being left out and why. The communities and institutions we work with are not “beneficiaries” — they define the problem with us.

  2. We design with public criteria

    WCAG 2.2 level AA is our floor, not our ceiling, and each service's rules are published before it launches.

    The criteria we design with are not workshop secrets: the usage limits, formats and privacy commitments of every service are published before the service exists. That way anyone can hold us to account.

  3. Validation with real assistive technology

    An associate of the institute, an expert screen reader user, validates every iteration with her own technology. Nothing ships without her sign-off.

    Automated audits catch only part of the barriers. That is why every version of what we build — this site included — passes through the hands of an associate who is an expert assistive-technology user, with her everyday setup, before it is published.

    Four people gather around a laptop connected to a braille display; one points at the screen while the others follow the test
    Photo: Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

  4. Peer review

    No audit leaves the institute under a single signature. What we state has been verified by more than one person.

    The rule was born in our consulting line and we raised it to a general principle: every product, report or audit gets at least two pairs of eyes before going out. Trust is not declared — it is built with method.

    Two women review code together on a laptop screen; one of them types on the keyboard
    Photo: #WOCinTech Chat — CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

  5. We publish and keep listening

    A public channel to report barriers, answers within 7 days, and the code of our services open for anyone to verify.

    Publishing is not finishing. Everything we launch ships with a channel to report barriers, a commitment to answer within seven days, and the willingness to tell you what we did with every report.

In one sentence

Accessibility is not promised — it is verified

You can read the result of this method applied to ourselves in this site's accessibility statement — including the channel to tell us where we fail.