Navigating Digital Accessibility for STEM Education

Problem Solved

Accelerate Learning was grappling with several pressing concerns at once:

• Designs and platforms still under development needed to meet accessibility standards, so that every user could get at the same material.
• Hiring and onboarding dedicated accessibility experts was costly and slow, stretching limited resources against real deadlines.
• They did not have the in-house expertise to act on accessibility issues once testing found them, and were unsure how to proceed.
• They needed independent third-party evaluation and documentation of conformance — Accessibility Conformance Reports and VPATs — that districts and states would accept.

The underlying problem was one every mid-sized product company runs into: accessibility is a specialist discipline, but not a full-time one. Two full-time specialists would have cost well over $300,000 across three years, before anyone had written a line of documentation.

• Solution — a fractional accessibility team

  Accelerate Learning turned to Accessiblü’s Managed Accessibility Ops service: a dedicated group of accessibility experts working as an extension of their own team, sized to the work rather than to a headcount.

  • The same people, every time. Accelerate Learning works with dedicated experts who already know their platforms — not staff rotated in and out who need bringing up to speed with every request. After three years, that context compounds.
  • Accessiblü integrated directly into Accelerate Learning’s development process, so accessibility ran alongside the build rather than behind it.
  • Issues found in testing were logged straight into Accelerate Learning’s JIRA, giving both teams real-time tracking and resolution.
  • Fixes were retested and validated by Accessiblü, closing the loop rather than leaving it open.
  • Direct Slack channels let Accelerate Learning’s team consult our specialists as they built, instead of waiting on a report.

• Results

  • Roughly $50,000 across the entire three-year engagement — audits, testing, guidance and documentation included.
  • Two full-time accessibility specialists over the same three years would have cost the company more than $300,000. Accelerate Learning met its goals for a fraction of that.
  • We have tested, updated and authored several ACRs and VPATs across their platforms, from both the instructor side and the student side — the two experiences behave differently, and both have to hold up.
  • We complete the state-required accessibility documentation their sales process depends on.
  • To date, no state has declined to adopt a platform we worked on, and none has rejected their accessibility plan or VPAT.
  • Accelerate Learning’s own team picked up real accessibility knowledge along the way, by being walked through the reasoning rather than handed a list.
  • Issues get found during development, so they are cheaper to fix and never reach a classroom.

• What a Fractional Partnership Actually Buys

  Three years in, this is the clearest example we have of how a fractional accessibility partnership works. Accelerate Learning gets specialists who know their products, documentation their buyers accept, and accessibility considered during development instead of audited after it — without carrying two salaries to get there.

  If that shape fits your organization, see how Managed Accessibility Ops is scoped, or start with testing and audits to find out where you stand.