The Digital Accessibility Maturity Model (DAMM): A Practical Framework for Sustained Accessibility
May 27, 2026
Author: Level Access
Digital accessibility maturity reflects your organization’s ability to deliver accessible experiences reliably and consistently across teams, tools, and an evolving digital portfolio.
Why maturity matters
Whether you’re getting started with digital accessibility or scaling a program across your organization, it can be challenging to define success. Are you on the right path? What practices should you focus on to sustain progress and consistently deliver accessible experiences?
Maturity models provide a structured way to assess progress in a specific area and guide improvement over time. They define levels from early-stage to advanced, with proof points expected at each stage, often organized into dimensions or core focus areas. For digital accessibility, this helps you understand where you are today, what “good” means as you grow, and how to scale sustainable practices across your organization.
What is DAMM?
The Level Access Digital Accessibility Maturity Model (DAMM™) is a practical framework for understanding the maturity of digital accessibility efforts. DAMM assesses an organization’s governance, repeatable practices, and readiness, beyond technical testing and compliance. It enables organizations of any size or experience level to benchmark their current approaches and chart actionable steps to improve. Informed by established maturity models, industry best practices, and 25+ years of expertise, DAMM defines five levels of maturity across seven key dimensions.
Figure 1: Visual of five escalating levels of digital accessibility maturity.
DAMM dimensions
Digital accessibility intersects with many facets of an organization, beyond just meeting technical standards. The seven core dimensions of DAMM cover all operational aspects of accessibility within an organization. Together, they provide holistic insight on accessibility maturity.
- Governance and policy: The commitments, accountability, risk planning, investment strategy, and management of digital accessibility.
- Communications: Internal and external communication about digital accessibility, including accessible communication channels.
- Development lifecycle: Integration of digital accessibility into design, development, testing, and release processes to support inclusive experiences.
- Support: Accessible support channels and guidance for users.
- Procurement: Evaluation of digital accessibility in vendor selection, procurement, and contracts.
- Knowledge and skills: Digital accessibility training and skill development managed across the organization.
- Culture: Everyday practices and decision-making that reflect accessibility and disability inclusion as a shared value.
Levels of maturity
With five defined levels of maturity, DAMM can be used as an assessment tool to determine where an organization is implementing digital accessibility well and where process or policy gaps remain. An organization will likely have different scores across various dimensions that they are working on in parallel.
| Level | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 – Initial | Reactive response, ad-hoc efforts, uncontrolled |
| 2 – Repeatable | Need is recognized, established ownership, emerging processes, improving consistency, not yet organization-wide |
| 3 – Defined | Processes formalized, progress tracked, distributed ownership, proactive planning, expanding knowledge |
| 4 – Managed | Processes embedded, actively measured, clear accountability, sustainable program, organizational priority |
| 5 – Optimizing | Innovative, continuously improving, inclusive culture, driving activism, industry leadership |
When to use a maturity model like DAMM
A maturity model like DAMM helps you understand the current state of your digital accessibility program and benchmark against best practices. This can be especially helpful if you’re aiming to:
- Establish a baseline early on.
- Validate progress at key milestones.
- Identify efficiencies and gaps.
- Recalibrate when progress plateaus.
- Realign after significant organizational change.
- Align cross-functional efforts and ownership.
- Prioritize resources before budget planning.
- Track and communicate program progress over time.
Supporting sustainable growth
While many digital accessibility initiatives share the same goals, there are various pathways to success. Wherever you are on your journey, using a framework like DAMM can help you determine your organization’s ability to consistently produce accessible results over the long term.
If you’re early in your efforts and want a fast baseline, use our free Maturity Quick Check to help gauge where you stand and what to focus on next to improve.
For deeper guidance, a comprehensive DAMM Assessment provides expert evaluation and analysis with tailored recommendations to support ongoing progress.
Trust Level Access as your expert partner to support your efforts and help guide you to achievable growth at a pace you can sustain. Reach out to our team today.
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