This can be assisted by the company having a design checklist which includes questions on the accessibility of the product by disabled users. However these organisations frequently do not have the technical expertise to understand some of the implications. Therefore there needs to be some form of collaboration between those who understand the language and the regulatory issues, those who have a good grasp of the technology, and those with lobbying skills. In the case of the former, in depth technical knowledge is not essential so many groups who represent disabled people could be involved. However the detailed writing must be done by people conversant with the technology which greatly restricts the choice of participants.
Standardisation is time consuming, often has low academic content, and is a long term activity.
In the disability area, there is often little obvious commercial benefit from being involved in the standardisation process. This means that it has been difficult to find appropriate people, with both knowledge of the technical and disability aspects, and with the time and independent funding to do the detailed work on the standards committees. There is still much work to be done in preparing design guidelines and undertaking studies of the costs and benefits of incorporating features needed by disabled people. Web sites Conferences and seminars have the disadvantage that they reach only a relatively small audience, and few people read conference proceedings. Newsletters can be useful but all too often they are uninteresting to the target audience and tend to be filed immediately in the waste paper basket.