[JONATHAN] Welcome everyone, I am Jonathan Thurston. Director of digital accessibility, for Walmart accessibility center of excellence. I'm a white male brown hair. Wearing AT shirt that says progress over perfection.

I also have ADHD. This is a topic that I'm super passionate about. Maturity models are game changing strategies for helping organizations to truly understand where they are and what they need to do next, and we're going to talk about that.

There is so much to discuss. I'm here with my friend colleague, James Thurston. We are looking forward to sharing everything we know about maturity models.

[JAMES] Thank you Jonathan. This may be the first time we've done a session like this together, and strange hearing our same last names. Were not related, as far as as we know, but we do both really love working in maturity models to drive progress in all kinds of organizations, on accessibility.

I'm James Thurston, I am the accessible digital transformation lead at a TOS in north America in our digital workplace, practice and working with our customers and partners on a whole range of accessible digital solutions for the workplace.

Like Jonathan, I have loved working with, even creating and building maturity model tools, working with all kinds of different kinds of organizations, companies, cities, universities, and using these maturity model tools.

There are a lot of them out there. Using these tools to understand where they are and drive progress based on a really robust and detailed understanding of where they are, so we are super excited. I've been working with these tools for maybe, like, you know, 8 or 9 to 10 years.

Our goal for the session -- I think is pretty straightforward. We are really hoping that all of you in this conversation with us today are as excited, or become as excited and see the real power of these maturity model tools, and even get interested in hopefully, using a tool for your organization, or joining in the use of a tool as another organization might be assessed, and being a part of a team, and we'll talk sort of about that process as well.

[JAMES] Absolutely, and James, I hope this isn't the last time that we talked together. We've been friends for many years. Again, it's nice to have a colleague that's just as passionate about accessibility and inclusion, and this topic around maturity models.

One of the things we want to talk about today is help companies and organizations to truly understand the maturity model process and how it is a proven framework for launching new accessibility programs.

Today's discussion is about digging into how organizations use these new tools and frameworks, like maturity models, to evaluate and benchmark that are valuable accessibility processes, strategies, and operations.

These tools -- we've seen them first hand. Impact the way organizations approach accessibility and inclusion, and we're so happy again, to be able to talk about how that works, why it works, and when organizations can really use these frameworks to help grow and propel their programs forward.

It's a whole mystic view. That's a whole view of accessibility. This is one of the things I truly love about the maturity model process. Is looking at accessibility holistically. It's not just looking at fixing a bugs, it's not just looking at culture, it's looking at all of these different pillars around accessibility to create again, and universal baseline.

To help you measure and track track your progress. James?

[JAMES] So the way we would design this conversation, and we're really hoping it is a conversation between the two of us, but also ultimately, with all of you, is to look in a few different ways of at maturity models.

Sort of, what we're using for shorthand, the why, the what, the how. So before we get into a discussion of what makes for good maturity model tools and processes, it's probably good to level set a little bit first on why?

Why would an organization take one of these pretty comprehensive looks at where they are today, and where they could be tomorrow on accessibility and digital inclusion. So, in the last few years as we all know, and we all talk about, have really accelerated digital transformation of our world, of companies, of sectors, regions of the world, and I think really made a lot more obvious, more apparent why all of our organizations need to be doing better on accessibility care Mac when the -- a good friend probably all of ours, many of ours, Carrie, whom I've done a maturity model assessment when she was at the city of Chicago, early on in the pandemic, she said something that has stayed with me and really helps me think about the power of these accessibility maturity model tools.

She said that crises and disasters, things like the pandemic really make glaringly apparent things we already know, and we know that we're not doing well enough collectively on accessibility, that we have an opportunity and imperative to be a lot better in our workplaces, to make them a lot more accessible care max so Jonathan, I've worked with you on maturity model assessments, and really been impressed with your leading efforts today at Walmart to use these tools, but can you talk a little bit about why, when you went to Walmart as you've been building out teams and colleagues there across the company, why you think it's important to get the new accessibility center of excellence there involved at driving maturity model work?

[JONATHAN] It's a very powerful tool, right? So within our complex business, it's often hard to establish where we are with accessibility. Where we are with that journey, and how we can truly compare across the market.

Right, within a maturity model process, we get the holistic evaluation of our progress across various functions, like procurement, training, standards, etcetera. It's a new baseline to benchmark our current levels of accessibility against.

Establishing that baseline is key, and very difficult to do. It's a custom framework for developing new road maps and strategies to scale inclusion across our enterprise. One of our biggest challenges is scale and impact, because we're so large.

Maturity model allows us to approach that and add very smart and proficient manner. So, James, it's clear it's clear you have a passion for accessibility and inclusion, and maturity model tools, and you have led multiple assessments across very different types of organizations, cities, universities.

Why? Was the value that you see, James and the maturity model process?

[JAMES] Sure, and I really admire being able to work with you on the maturity model process there at Walmart, that you're helping to lead,? So we'll talk a little bit about process and substance of these tools, and I think the value and the impact comes, not from one or the other, but from both.

Both what is the tool, and how do you use the tool. So Jonathan, you talked some a little bit already, about what the tools tell you, I think one of the most important benefits that I've seen and I've probably done dozens of these assessments, of different kinds of organizations over the years, I've worked with partners to create suites of these assessment tools.

I really do think that one of the benefits that I see from these is how it really gets different bleeders and managers and in departments of a company or university or whatever organization really gets them on the same page and understanding their approach to accessibility.

A lot of times, I think different people in the company, different compartments of different organizations don't necessarily understand where they are today the same way. So really from what I've seen in doing these assessments with the maturity model tool is often for the first time, it's getting them all in the -- either in the virtual room together, or in the real room together to think about all these different variables that define and effective and mature approach to accessibility and inclusion.

And that to me, is a huge win right there. Just getting people on the same page and in the same room.

[JONATHAN] That's often one of the largest problems to scale problems like this snow?

[JAMES] Another reason why inevitably -- insights that you might expect to see in ones that are a bit surprising is the kind of -- brings these people together. Chris Misra who is the CIO of the university of Massachusetts, who is a maturity model assessment at the university of Massachusetts talked about how the process of applying these tools at the university, and -- with of compartments, and really help them with that process to provide a lot greater focus on underlying issues that were really holding them back across the university, holding them back from making improvements, and so, as a result, they ended up putting a lot more focus on accessibility as part of their approach to blended learning at the university.

Taking some real concrete steps around captioning and powerpoints and in Zoom for example, that were incredibly helpful in driving driving inclusion. So ultimately, I've seen companies and organizations of all kinds use these outlets, about the results of these maturity model assessments, and again, in a minute we'll talk about the kinds of tools, what they all have in common, but I've absolutely -- and Jonathan, I think you have as well, seen companies and organizations use the results of these assessments to really drive real change, and use this process to raise awareness across the organization with senior executives, with line managers.

And by change, I mean things like I'm certainly seeing organizations that I've worked with maturity model tools investing more in staff and resources, focus on accessibility, and a transformational way.

Creating actual policies around accessibility and governance systems to implement those policies, as a result of elevating the focus on accessibility. And Jonathan, I know you and I have talked about how these these governance systems -- we need to be looking at accessibility to the same way we look at digital accessibility, the same way we look at privacy and security of technology.

And I've seen seen the maturity model process lead to that kind of governance system that elevates the importance of accessibility in an organization. We've seen organizations change how they bind deployment, much more focused on accessibility as part of the procurement process.

So, I mentioned Chris Misra from the university of Massachusetts, and other great learning that I like to talk about in terms of the why of these maturity model tools and why we would use them. He talked a lot -- when we worked on him on assessment, about how across the university, and this probably resonates with you in Walmart and some of the organizations that you're familiar with, and that I've been familiar with, I don't think it's unique to the university of Massachusetts, but within that large organization, there are these pockets of heroic effort.

That's what he called it. It's a person doing great things, in that department, and with no way to scale that best practice pure milk and what I saw with that organization and with others, is really using the maturity model process to shine a spotlight on those pockets of heroic effort, a term that I love, because it really is most times.

And find a way to scale those efforts across an organization.

[JONATHAN] Excellent your Mac

[JAMES] Lots of reasons for why we would want to use these. I think there's probably a lot more, but maybe we can start talking a little bit Jonathan, about the what. And started digging into maturity model tools and what we mean by them.

As I mentioned, and Jonathan as you know, there's a lot of different tools out there. I don't think that we're here to endorse one or the other, but I think that we can think about some similarities across could maturity model tools for assessment.

[JONATHAN] There are multiple versions of the models in the market. We are not here promoting one specific model. But as, you know, part of the disability community, we want options. Thankfully, we do have different types of options around running these types of exercises and in models.

And I would encourage anyone comment I'll come back to this later, who's interested in running maturity models to research and look at the different examples out there, and find the best fit for your organization.

[JAMES] And absolutely feel free to reach out to Jonathan on the on the comment because we've been a lot of involved and a lot of the tools that we built, these maturity models, and we use them. But they're typically a function of substance, these dimensions or variables that are being examined, or the focus of our maturity model assessments.

And levels of maturity that apply to each of these dimensions or variables. Typically, the levels of maturity for any kind of maturity models who are going to be a scale of 1 to 5. So Jonathan, based on some of your experience using different tools and maybe even your experience now with Walmart, can you share some thoughts now on these dimensions and the variables that substance of what accessibility and inclusion maturity model might focus on qac?

[JONATHAN] I would love to comment again I just want to go back to the point that I was looking at before. Maturity models are a holistic approach to accessibility. Is not just focusing on one facet or one aspect or one pillar of accessibility.

Is a sort of really well rounded view, and I truly believe this is the right approach to accessibility? You can't just fix the bugs and be done with it. If you fix the bugs, you're going to be fixing the bugs forever, this is a framework that allows you to get out of that vicious cycle.

So, maturity models are often composed of different types of pillars around accessibility. And what's interesting, and from my experience of working with multiple different companies, helping them to build accessibility programs from the scratch, basically.

From nothing to something. These pillars are extremely important, right? And was interesting too is that often you see there are these certain themes that go through even different types of organizations.

Even cities and universities, there's plastic sort of, pillars around accessibility. And we can go there and talk about some of those right now. People and culture. You need to work on people and culture as part of your accessibility approach.

You can't deal without people, right. And you need to shift your culture so that your company and organization understand the accessibility is something to be embraced. It's a part of who we are. And it's a part of the current and future workplace.

We need to shift our culture to embrace accessibility, and embrace our differences as well. And there's a whole pillar around that with this model. Vision strategy engagement, this is one of my favorite parts as well, I love strategy, I love the the vision.

Around working towards a more inclusive world. But how do you even start to track that, how do you even measure that, right? Maturity model gives you a framework to build a baseline around pillar pillar like that.

What about investments?

[JAMES] If I can just jump in before going on to investments. On the vision piece, I also love it, and obviously is a critical part of any organization in big or small, regardless of,, of having different types of strategies.

There is, ideally accessibility strategy. It can be part of a larger dei strategy, which is great, adding accessibility in their, is a great outcome as well. But even as part of the strategy, thinking about how do we align our focus, our commitment to accessibility as a company or an organization or an employer, with our business strategy as well.

And making sure that those are complementary and supporting each other, and finding the competitive advantage a lot of times for companies and being more accessible, whether that's attracting more talent, or more customers.

[JONATHAN] Brilliant, I couldn't agree more. And again, that vision and strategy is going to be unique for every single organization. Again, there's themes. Right, but you have to customize it for the ways of working.

And the way that the company or business or organization works, right. So the vision and strategy is always going to be different, right. So, investments. Investing money, and resources towards achieving success around inclusion.

This is a huge pillar to measure, if you have an investment, what are you doing? You know?

[JAMES] It's super easy to have it on paper, and I think we've both seen this participating in multiple different maturity models assessments. To have great documentation, you get a policy, and you have a government system, great processes for how we're buying and running technology, but if you're not actually investing and supporting that, then there's going to be a problem.

And most beautiful comment we'll talk about this more when we talk about the levels of maturity, that if that investment is not there, regardless of what the variable is, it could be training, it could be procurement, it could be communications, and accessible communication channels, there's lots of different variables and these tools, if the investment is not there to support it, they're going to end up with -- on the lower end of the one to five scale for maturity.

[JONATHAN] Absolutely, there's a ripple effect across the rest of the pillars as well. Investment can be things like building and accessibility team. Investing in the community, investing in tool sets, investing in training, I can go on and and on and on.

But these are our key sort of parts of running a successful accessibility program, and without that investment, it's extremely difficult.

[JAMES] And John, on the investment piece, sorry for jumping in, I think on the many different assessments of different organizations that have been part of, I think just about all of them have successfully used the process, and then the output which will also talk about in a minute, the output of that process double dashes they set of scores and recommendations to drive increased investment.

Because, you've got literally a road map that tells you how to mature your processes for accessibility, and it makes it easier to make the case for increased investment.

[JONATHAN] What a brilliant point, right? Because you can't get investment from buying from leadership right? And if you're struggling to get that by, and to get that investment, the maturity model is an excellent tool to showcase the need for that investment, not only with your associates, but with your customers too.

Write? Again, I love the maturity model and its holistic approach, right. We can talk about another pillow around standards. Right? How mature is your organization around developing your own version and flavor of accessibility standards?

We have brilliant standards we can lean on across the industry, global standards, right. But how does your organization interpret those standards? How do you have a source of truth around how to follow and implement those specific standards?

That's something that is a sign of maturity, and also, helps to enable accessibility processing across the organization. Without that, right, whose standards do you follow? Who do you listen to? What sort of processes do you you align with?

So standards are extremely important as well. And a huge sign of maturity.

[JAMES] And where are those standards being used? As you're talking about -- are you aware of the relevant standards, this could be for digital accessibility or environment accessibility as well. But are you incorporating them into your design guides, are you incorporating those standards into your your performance processes.

[JONATHAN] The design system, right? Your marketing materials. The way you build, your product creation lifecycle cycle.

[JAMES] These categories come up for people who aren't familiar with maturity models. Each of these categories that Jonathan is leading us through, it's possible to have one or even a few very discrete variables, very relevant to each of these categories, people and culture, people envision, and strategic investments, standards, it's not just possible, it's critical really to have discrete variables that can be assessed and scored around each of those.

Sorry Jonathan,, jump back in.

[JONATHAN] No I love to come the way I think of these pillars are is that they are multifaceted. In fact even the pillars is an example of being multifaceted, right. That each one of these pillars has distinct different parts to it, right.

That's a good segue to training and supporting tools. Right? That pillar alone holds three different aspects to it, in each one of those aspects had different sort of variables to look at and to explore.

Training, for example. Does your organization offer accessibility training? How do you go about approaching accessibility training? Do you have resources internally, subject matter experts who can provide that training?

Do you partner with other organizations to help you implement that training inside? There's multiple different strategies, and you know, we're not here to say what's right or wrong, because every organization is different, right.

What we're here to say is you should have training. Should help figure out mechanisms to create awareness around the super important topic.? And it's a signal if you don't have training. That sends a signal.

And it's something we can measure.

[JAMES] And John on the training, I think the organizations that I'm familiar with, that I've worked with over the years that have advanced to the furthest, I would say, think about training, as you said in a very multifaceted weight.

Obviously training around accessibility for your IT professionals, developers and designers. Your procurement officials need training on disability on accessibility, your communications people, both for internal communications for employees, and external communications need training on accessibility of communications, both the content and the channels that you, your company your organization deploys that content on.

So it really is a comprehensive look at world based training, and what do these different roles in the company or organization need to know, for that role, related to accessibility and disability.

[JONATHAN] Yep and those maturity models can help you map out those issues with accessibility, whether they exist or whether they don't, and whether they're impactful to. You mentioned procurement. This is one of my favorite pillars.

Solar procurement -- looking at the procurement of your organization. Do you pay attention to products and services that you're procuring, and whether they embrace accessibility or not? Whether they're accessible or not?

What does that process look like? Again, if there is no process like that, it sends a signal. And there's multiple ways to roll out a process around accessible procurement? Ultimately, I would say that you want your new partners that you're on boarding to become part of your organization, to be accessible.

Now it's an interesting sort of discussion, because not every company is accessible, of course., yet. They have to be, but not yet. A journey.. So sometimes you do have to make a negotiation with the business and the procurement process, so if a company is not fully accessible, quote, yet, the procurement process is an opportunity to encourage that future partner to work towards becoming accessible?

You can mandate that they commit to accessibility, and perhaps share their road map to achieve alignment with the standards, and there's a certain sort of -- over a certain amount of time, right. This is the power of the procurement process.

Products and services are not if your partner's product and services aren't accessible, who can fix it qnec so you want to have that conversation up front before you get into business together.

[JAMES] I'm really -- for each of these categories of variables that we know are drivers of increasing accessibility and digital inclusion, a really strong maturity model as you're looking at various tools, we'll have each of these categories that are broken out into component parts.

Peermak so with procurement, looking at the use of standards, looking at training or procurement officials, looking at how you communicate and work with your vendor ecosystem on accessibility, there's a lot nested in there as Jonathan's been describing.

Not just for procurement, for each of these higher level categories of maturity model variables.

[JONATHAN] And just, procurement being its own pillar on its own gives you an idea of how important that is to that truly holistic vision, right. So the next one we're going to talk about is also one of my favorite pillars, it's around the product development lifecycle.

. How do you build your products and services? Every company does different, I've worked in many different companies that have very different types of product development life cycles, right. But one thing I've noticed is there's always the opportunity to inject accessibility into that life cycle.

And of course, as most of us on this call know, injecting accessibility, considering accessibility at the beginning of the process, shifting left is the one of the most powerful things you can do. If you address accessibility at the beginning, throughout the whole process, you don't end up with an experience that's inaccessible that you have to fix later.

And I'll tell you comment as many people on this call also probably know and have lived, fixing it later, retrofitting it, remediating it, is a a huge pain. And it's extremely expensive. It's very inefficient, one if you had just approached it from the beginning through the end, you don't have to worry about that stuff.

Right? So this is an interesting way James. Sales, marketing, and communication. This is something that's measured on maturity models as well. Why do we measure marketing and sales? Why do we look at the communication communication?

Of a company or organization. While the maturity model measures how accessibility is approached. Is your marketing messages accessible? Are your communications to your customers and associates accessible?

Are your sales pitches pitches accessible? It's extremely important as part of your image and growth to make sure that these components embrace accessibility as well. A few send out a marketing message that's inaccessible, and it's also telling the world that you are a company that is inaccessible.

It's an extremely important pillar to measure against, and you know, it's a journey. This is one thing we have to remind everyone, this is a journey. But with a maturity model does is it shows you where you are on that journey, and we're going to dig into this a little bit more soon, but where, how you can go to that next level of maturity once your baseline has been established.

So James, within these within these key dimensions, you know, are there any that you would like to focus on in the assessment part?

[JAMES] Sure, so they're obviously all important all of these dimensions and the sub variables under them, which as you mentioned, can be different across different maturity model tools. Obviously, they're all important.

I think you comment Jonathan you mentioned that most of them were your favorite, which tells you --

[JONATHAN] Yes, my favorite is the holistic view. Looking at all of the different parts and how they put together.

[JAMES] So I won't pick favorites of our children, but I will say that in the assessment that I've led, across different kinds of organizations, there often are times where it seems like the expert teams that I put together to do these assessments are spending a lot of time and interest in discussions in some of these areas, and some of these variables, mention a few of them in particular.

One of them is metrics, measurement. Those are the organization that does the company company, is it using the numbers, is taking a quantitative approach to understanding across all of these variables?

How it's doing when it comes to supporting accessibility and inclusion qmax so that could be metrics or procurement. And one of the best organizations that I've seen when it comes to procurement of accessible technology is university here in the united states, line based, and they knew that 80% of their procurements were referencing relevant accessibility standards, and they knew why the other 20% weren't, and there were some reasons why, but they knew why.

Some departments were sort of exempt, I think it was sports and research -- were exempt from having to comply with the university with the policy of accessibility, because they bring in so much money.

They have those numbers down, they knew how many of those vendors were submitting VPN AC T or some other kind of conformance statement, we knew how many of those were engaged with the IT professional to get some more information on, so metrics across the board, could also be the training activity, they could also be the vocations, but really spending a lot of time focused on the measurements of each of these variables is always, seems to be a very big part of the conversation.

Leadership and budget, you also. Peermak you can't really get past these pockets of heroic effort, without leadership support and budget support. So, those also, I guess would be favorites, or certainly areas where I know in the assessments that I've done, the variables in those areas we've spent a lot of time focused on.

But really, they are all critical barriers, what's important about these variables, I've developed and used several of these tools over the years, is, as you're looking at maturity model tools, if you start to evaluate some -- the variables have to be really well defined and discrete.

They can't be mushy and a lot of overlap, if you want to be able to assign scores on a range of 1 to 5, the variables have to be super well defined, crisp, with one aspect that they're looking at a time.

Otherwise, it becomes hard to distinguish 1 variable from another, and you can't really do that kind of assessment Jonathan, that you're talking about and have done, where you can identify those discrete blockers, and then figure out strategies.

So as you're evaluating your own maturity models that you might want to use, make sure that both the variables are well defined, in those five levels of maturity are also defined? Kyumak

[JONATHAN] Those well defined variables ultimately define clarity, which is what a really solid maturity model in our program can provide to you. There's a lot of fuzziness in this space, right. And what we're trying to do is is shine a light and create an accurate sort of assessment of where we are, and that's super important, because we need to be able to understand where we are, so we understand what we need to do to grow and improve.

Yeah? I was just going to say John just as important as a developing,,

[JAMES] It's also really important to make sure that for whatever the variable is, it can be related to treating, or external communications in accessibility that a level, how you define level one for each of your variables in that tool, is the same across all of the variables.

And how one being typically on the lower end of the scale of maturity, not 5 being what I call world class. And almost unattainable today in the way that I look at it, and use maturity models. But if one has to be the same, for each of the variable, in terms of the kinds of things that you would expect to see in a one or two or three, or five variable.

And Jonathan, I don't know if you want to talk about the levels before --

[JONATHAN] Inconsistency perfect segment, and of course consistency is very important as well? We want to sort of authentic analysis. We want a real baseline, we don't want an opinion. We want a real baseline established by subject matter experts.

So, maturity models have often have 5 levels sort of sort of, success. And as Jane mentioned, there really aren't no models yet, I'm looking forward to this, of the total 5, the highest level. Sort of sort of, achieving the number five highest level on the different maturity model levels, but let's start with the first one.

This is of course, where we all start. The initial level, we halt the initial one. The first level. Often, this is an company or organization that has few services or initiatives, that are inclusive, they are just getting started.

There hasn't been much effort around it, they probably don't have that leadership buying yet, there aren't many resources allocated to it, sure there there might be some bright lots around that they haven't been fully realized and capitalized on.

This is the initial stage, this is where we all start. Then the growth from the initial stages to a more reactive stage, right. This is where our companies and organizations start to begin to demonstrate their capabilities and stronger commitments to inclusion.

I would say most of the organizations that I reviewed and maturity models for fall within the one and two range, currently. This is sort of standard across the market. But again we will move to level 3, this is where we see the much more proactive companies sort of sitting.

3 1/2 and four. So the third level, is the defined stage, these are companies and organizations that are increasingly been driven by the standardization of processes, policies in place, detailed guidelines for inclusion, this is where things really start to click.

Where you really start to see the efforts around accessibility and inclusion starts to pay off? James, would you agree that most companies fall between that one and two range, and a lot of the leaders are around the three and the four qnec it's interesting and sure, and it's interesting

[JAMES] People get wrapped around, with numbers and quantifying, which is the whole point of these maturity models tools. But I try to focus people more on the definition of what that is for a variable, as opposed to just calculating numbers.

But in the dozens at this point of these assessments that have done, that I've LED with teams of experts, including you as an expert in running them. I have have yet to see on any variable in any organization, 5.

And again, I designed the tools that I've created, five is today, unattainable, it's world class. Its future, forward looking, for sure. I can count on one hand the number of hours that I have seen, in any organization for any variable on one hand.

[JONATHAN] Absolutely and that would be the leaders in the space?

[JAMES] Absolutely, and really where we are today, collectively, I think if an organization is achieving a level 3, that defined stage that you talked about, for a variable, that's good. But for the most part, I have probably seen in my experience of using these tools with different organizations, mostly twos, and unfortunately, still a lot of ones.

[JAMES] Right, and it's a journey, progress over perfection as well.

[JONATHAN] So the 4th level is managed? Right, enterprise wide approach to inclusion and services, technology and initiatives. And again, this is a very matured level. This is a company that embraces accessibility, this is an organization that is truly not only influencing inclusion around their own organization, but across the world on the globe.

For impact, and partnership, right. And level 5, which is our north star, which is where we all want to drive towards and strive towards achieving comment which is this optimized level, right. Where the global leaders within an approach to inclusion and services technology deployments, and initiatives, again, the north star.

This is a company that is fully inclusive, batteries accessibility like equality metric like security privacy, and performance. Something equal, not more, not less, but a true equal sort of variable to measure against, and this is where we're all hopefully headed.

If you want to get there as an organization, the maturity model is a brilliant framework to help you figure out what that road map is going to look like, and how you're going to get get there. Alright, so James, some high level thoughts again, just around around these levels.

[JONATHAN]

[JAMES] Great overview of the levels that are very important, just like how we define levels. And I'm really, those levels that you just talk to, are the same for any maturity model, doesn't matter what it's for, what topic, accessibility or anything else.

I think in the accessibility and digital inclusion space, where I've worked most of -- the maturity model tools, in addition to what you've declined as standard maturity model levels. The way that I think about maturing from A1 to A2 to A3, to A4 to A5, is a few things.

The more consistent you are in applying whatever that good practice is? If you have a process in place for your development process, and you're consistently applying that, or you have a process in place for the university they mentioned 4, buying accessible technology, and you know you're consistently applying that.

That's one way that you would mature through the system, regardless of what the variable is, consistency in implementing whatever your processes are. Collaboration across departments in organization common units in an organization.

I've talked about you know, these pockets of heroic effort, moving beyond a pocket of heroic effort and that one, we all know that one really good person who's been slogging away on accessibility in their organization for a long time.

Moving me on that to a shared responsibility approach to accessibility is how you mature to the five levels. I mentioned metrics. In applying those metrics to continuous improvement, quantifying what you're doing across all of these different variables, and using it for continuous improvement is how you go from A12 A22A5.

And once again, coming back to budget and resources. And regardless of what the variable is, you're not going to go beyond A2, if there's no resources for limitation. There's no leadership support to drive or commitment to whatever that variable that variable is.

[JONATHAN] Yeah, one of the other things I love about maturity models, and I love a lot, for me a really good example of a maturity model is 1, one that doesn't just give you numbers and metrics and results, but gives you strategy and low hanging fruit to drive innovation to allow you to achieve that level of success at the next level of maturity carmack.

This is extremely -- and also, V partnership with external subject subject matter experts to help come and do that sort of scoring for you, to help do multiple things. One, give you a really unified sort of score, of your organization from external experts who know what they're doing, and talking about, and what's interesting having been one of those experts in the past, and currently, is it's so interesting how those experts almost always score almost the same number, because once you interview and talk and explore and listen, it really becomes evident, sort of where you are.

And then, also the steps to get to that next level of maturity carmac. This is also about partnership, and also you were talking about this these pockets of brilliance, right? How do you grow those pockets of brilliance out across the organization, and out?

It is through that partnership, and one of the things I surely believe the heart of accessibility is partnership, and this is a method to -- and a framework to grow substantially that partnership.

[>>] Just being mindful of time, we talked about why own organization would be interested in doing maturity model assessment.

[JAMES] We talked about what they are, both in terms of the substance and material, and also maturity, maybe we can talk just a little bit about more the how, the process which we have actually started getting into a little bit.

Any more insights on -- and what's great about having this conversation with you Jonathan, is that you've still been on both sides of this maturity model process. You've been an expert on teams that -- with me, has assessed universities and other organizations, but you've also been helping to lead the process at your own company.

In terms of the process, any other insights into what makes for a good use of application for these maturity model tools? But certainly maturity model with certain maturity models,

[JONATHAN] One of the deliverables is receiving a road map report? This is a high level, detailed report that basically outlines the steps you need to take as an organization, to achieve success with that next level.

The road map report is extremely valuable, the ones I've worked on with James have been very sort of powerful with helping to get by in, and I often think about accessibility, not about evangelizing and talking to people about the importance of this really valuable space?

It's about you know, that partnership, and growing it across the organization. Awesome they're both awesome, I'm

[TILLY] We're getting close to the end of time, and there's a quote and remember questions, this is pure gold.

[JAMES] Thanks.

[TILLY] There's a lot of awesome questions, and I thank you in advance for following up with the questions after the fact. But I will give you a couple of them, and I'm going to give you simple ones, I hope, I'm just going to to read them to you, have you seen maturity models being conducted at the team level in large organizations, and then reviewed and combined?

[JONATHAN] Do you want to answer that?

[JAMES] Yeah I'll jump in on that. What's great about these tools comments certainly as I've used them, there's kind of there's sort of like accordion like. Their accordion like in two ways. One is, I've used them where we focus on the subset of the variables, but I've also used them where we focused on a department of an organization.

So for example, and one university here in the US, we only worked with the vista school. They were on the leading edge at that university of wanting to be more accessible, and inclusive or a whole bunch of reasons, and they sort of came to us at the university wasn't quite ready to do it enterprise.

Why, but I think that one department doing it, they a lot of benefit out of it, but I think they also pulled their colleagues of the university level -- so that you can absolutely apply these tools at the subset of the variables, and for a subset of your organization.

[JONATHAN] The brilliance is their highly customizable, right. You can modify this process and framework to meet your needs, and that's, I'll say it again, that's also one of the things I love about this process.

[TILLY] I'm going to give you one more question, and it will be the last question, we have a couple minutes left here. But before I do that, there were a number of questions where people were yearning for specific information about different types of models, in different situations and so, maybe when you go back to the questions, provide some of that information, because they were really yearning for that.

There were several questions that. There were several questions specifically about that, if that's OK. I know that you wanted to have agnostic models, not advocate one or the other, so I think you can just do that offline.

If that's OK with you.

[JONATHAN] Absolutely.

[TILLY] Our last question is here. So at what point of the maturity model do you recognize first assessing the maturity model? There you go come and there's the answer now. Early, when they're getting started come a little bit further along, any advice, perspective.

Peermak

[JONATHAN] It works no matter where you are.

[TILLY] It works. The sooner you measure your line, the sooner you can measure your progress. That's why I'm saying now. Again, is really hard to measure accessibility and inclusion. This gives you a method to do that, so I say now.

James, what do you say?

[JAMES] I agree with your enthusiasm, but forgive me Jonathan, I will say -- and I've worked with organizations that you know, different points of maturity, but it's hard to do I think to really get the maximum benefit out of these tools come if you're a single pocket of heroic effort.

You sort of get these examining gestures yourself. I think you need some level of either department wide or enterprise wide, willingness to participate in the process. I know that in the process that I've led, and the application of these tools, we've sort of looked at a three step process, where there's some initial desk research on documents, or the organization or the company I'm one of their policies, or one of their policies, one of their guides, then we put together an expert team to evaluate what we thought we saw in our desk research, but you really need some level, I think of involvement from different players.

Now, for sure, man, if you can get others involved in the process, it's going to be that much more powerful.

[JONATHAN] Awesome carmac tally, can I say one thing real quick came out I just want to thank everyone for joining us today. The fact that you tuned in to hear this discussion it shows that you care Mac and that for me, and for us is super important.

I look forward to partnering with you all, to create the most accessible and inclusive world possible in the future, and again, it is about that partnership. So thank you.

[JAMES] Absolutely, and Jonathan, to your point that in the now. I've had a lot of conversations with organizations about you know, ohh gosh, our scores are way lower than we thought they were going to be, and again -- this is an expert team that comes up with this, using really robust tools.

And what I tell organizations, and this goes to the previous question, if you are even signing up to do this, you're in the top 10 or 20%. Organizations, in your sector, or whatever. Because you are committed to making improvement, so on some level, it doesn't matter if you're getting lots of ones and twos across the variables, you're at the table, you're trying to drive change, and that's better than 80% of other organizations today.

So, I congratulate any organization that wants to step up to a department within an organization that wants to step up and use one of these tools.