Solutions Factory hard at work with accessible recruitment software

Swink's digital accessibility specialists examined the technology of working-at-sites in 2024 according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). If your website, platform or app meets the WCAG guidelines, it is also usable by people with a (temporary) functional limitation. According to the Government Digital Accessibility Decree, government organizations must make their websites and apps digitally accessible. One of the steps to do so is to publish an accessibility statement in the central registry. This decision prompted Solutions Factory to take up this matter. Klaas: “Most of our clients are government agencies and therefore obliged to have such an accessibility test done. So we said: we are going to deliver this product digitally accessible. And if it's not, we'll fix it for you.”

Being digitally accessible increases your findability

The company sees why digital accessibility is important. “It increases your findability online and the opportunities for what our software does,” Klaas explains. “It is of value to make sure that your work-by site is easily accessible to everyone. And thereby increase the pool of candidates.”

Working together in knowledge group to ensure accessibility

Solutions Factory has set up a knowledge group internally to take up the subject of digital accessibility. This includes the delivery and support team, which Klaas manages, and the product development team. “These two teams are part of our development department, because we want to bring digital accessibility and the development of our software products together properly. For example, to prevent things being built that hurt the accessibility of the software.” The group has its own team in Microsoft Teams where they work together and share these kinds of issues. “Then this issue doesn't just belong to my team, but we all do it together.”

Tackling accessibility issues up front

For Klaas, the advantage of working together like this in this team, which also involves their designer, is that it prevents you from having to fix an online platform afterwards because it does not meet accessibility requirements. “Precisely because everyone involved knows about it in advance, when designing a website, for example, it is already taken into account that it has to be accessible.”

That's still a tall order. “The reports from our accessibility tests do not all come from the same vendor. Figuring out the meaning of such a report and how to interpret it is quite a puzzle. If something is not accessible, how do you translate it into what exactly you need to adjust and how?” Therefore, it remains human work.

Making users aware of the importance of digital accessibility

What also makes it difficult to make and keep an online platform accessible is that, according to Klaas, the end user is not always aware of digital accessibility. “We provide training for our job sites in which we inform clients that it is important for accessibility to give an image a concrete description (alternative text, ed.) and not a 'photo 1'. We also put that clearly in the manual. Yet this does not always go well because users do not use this site on a daily basis.” That's why Solutions Factory is committed to raising awareness by stating the importance of digital accessibility in their training sessions.

Eventually also making the recruitment system accessible

For now, only the front-end of their system (front office) has been tested for accessibility because this is required by law. For the back end, the recruitment system (back office), this does not yet apply, but Solutions Factory prefers to be ahead of that obligation, according to Klaas. “Our ambition is to deliver a fully digitally accessible system for our clients.” He expects this to be easily achievable because the back office, unlike the front office, is the same for every client. That's a matter of putting it right just once. So we will definitely look at that when there is capacity and time for it.”

Tip for other organizations

Finally, Klaas has a tip for other organizations that are starting out with digital accessibility: “I think it's good to make an inventory of your online environments and how they relate to digital accessibility. Include things like your corporate identity in that. It's also good to decide in your communications team how you're going to deal with digital accessibility. What has worked for us is that we created an accessible product that serves as the basis for similar products from Solutions Factory. That makes the step to becoming fully digitally accessible a lot smaller.”