The Accessibility Kit for SharePoint: A Community-Based Approach to Web Accessibility
Robert B. Yonaitis, Dana Louise Simberkoff, Kurt A. Mueffelmann, Cynthia Shelly · 2008 · Proceedings of the 2008 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A) · doi:10.1145/1368044.1368050
Summary
This paper describes the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS), an open-source add-on developed by HiSoftware in collaboration with Microsoft to bring WCAG 1.0 AA conformance to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS). SharePoint was at the time Microsoft's fastest-growing server product with 84 million licenses sold and over million USD in annual revenue, making its accessibility posture enormously consequential for both internet-facing websites and internal enterprise intranets. While MOSS 2007 had made accessibility improvements over its predecessor and considered WCAG 2.0 working drafts during design, customers needed WCAG 1.0 AA conformant sites on the platform. AKS addressed this through a non-invasive approach: rather than modifying SharePoint's core components, it layered accessible templates, CSS stylesheets with relative font sizing (replacing SharePoint's absolute sizes), master pages, control adapters that intercepted web part output before browser rendering, and reusable content examples on top of existing installations. The kit was released under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), an OSI-approved open source license, at no cost. Crucially, the project included an educational and community component — the AKS Community site brought together government organizations, universities, NGOs, advocacy groups, technology companies, and systems integrators worldwide to share best practices, challenges, and source code.
Key findings
AKS generated significant adoption: over 1,500 organizations downloaded the kit and 150 joined the community within the first 30 days of release. The paper identifies four key lessons from the initiative. First, building a community beyond just the software vendor encourages knowledge sharing even among competitive organizations united by a common accessibility goal. Second, involving target organizations from the beginning ensures the solution meets real needs. Third, delivering incremental releases demonstrates value early and allows course correction based on feedback. Fourth, designing add-ons with practical implementation concerns (cost, impact on existing installations) in mind drives adoption more effectively than theoretical solutions. The technical approach was deliberately modular — AKS was built as "building blocks" rather than an end-to-end solution, allowing developers to pick components relevant to their specific SharePoint deployment. The server-side installation meant end-user content authors could create more accessible output without needing to understand WCAG details or install additional software.
Relevance
This paper offers a practical model for accessibility remediation of widely-deployed enterprise platforms that remains relevant today. The core insight — that accessibility improvements to a dominant authoring tool have outsized impact because they reach millions of sites simultaneously — applies equally to modern CMS platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and cloud-based website builders. The community-based approach, where diverse stakeholders collaborate on accessibility solutions for a shared platform, anticipates the open-source accessibility communities that have since grown around various web frameworks. For organizational accessibility practitioners, the paper demonstrates that non-invasive, incremental, and educational approaches to platform accessibility are more likely to succeed than mandating wholesale redesigns. The emphasis on making accessibility invisible to content authors — handling compliance at the template and server level rather than requiring each contributor to understand WCAG — remains a best practice for enterprise accessibility strategy.
Tags: web accessibility · content management systems · organizational accessibility · WCAG compliance · open source · community · enterprise software · authoring tools
Standards referenced: WCAG 1.0 · WCAG 2.0