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AIR Client Roadmap

AIR works best when clients and teams work closely together. Over about ten weeks, your team will design, build, and launch an accessible website for your organization, and your involvement shapes the result. Use this roadmap to plan ahead, prepare your content, and stay on track at each stage.

Prior to Kick-Off

Read the Rally Rules

AIR works because everyone starts on the same page. The Rally Rules lay out how the competition runs — who qualifies, the conditions sites are built under, how judges evaluate it — along with the commitments clients, teams, and mentors make.

Attend Client Orientation Session

During this training clients will learn how to prepare web content for their teams, manage expectations, communicate with their teams after the Kick-Off, and receive additional resources to guide them throughout the development process.

  • Mandatory attendance: Each participating client must send at least one representative who will be working with the team.
    • Clients who do not attend orientation will not be matched with a team.
  • Clients will receive a survey to select their preferred session date and time.
    • Once their response has been recorded, they will receive a Zoom invite to attend their selected orientation session.

Attend the AIR Kick-Off

This is where you will meet your Team for the first time.

  • Mandatory attendance: Each participating client must send a representative who will be working with the team.
  • Identify your Team’s overall project manager, Team Lead, and client contact.Set up weekly meetings with your Team or Team Lead.
  • Agree on communication and project management tools (such as Slack, or Google Drive).
  • If you’re unable to determine this information at the Kickoff, complete these tasks within 48 hours after it.

Meet Weekly (Weeks 1–8)

  • Communicate promptly and efficiently with your Team, Client and Mentor by email or Slack.
  • Hold weekly project status check-ins with your Team and your Team’s client contact.
  • Monitor communication between your organization and your Team, and address issues early.

We’ve mapped some suggested topics and activities below, but you will learn what’s right for you and your Team as you get to know each other.

Week 1: Get to Know Your Team

  • Hold an introductory meeting with your Team.
  • Decide with your Team where the site will be hosted during the competition.
  • Review the AIR Judging Form with your Team. It lists the tasks your Team needs to complete for the competition, and your Team will use it to help prioritize work.
  • Join the communication and collaboration channels your Team has set up (such as Google Drive or Slack).
  • Review the AIR Training courses in Knowbility's Learning Center, if you haven't already (enrollment codes will be sent via email).

Week 2: Plan the Site

  • Meet with your Team to discuss the site, questions, and next steps.
  • Review project design artifacts (project plan, wireframes, content inventory, etc.).
  • Discuss where your site will be hosted after AIR ends.

Weeks 3–6: Review and Refine

  • Hold a design review and feedback session with your Team each week.
  • Continue to gather and send content to your Team as requested, or by the deadlines your Team sets.
  • Around Week 5, ask your Team whether they are creating an AIR Highlights video and whether they need anything from you for it.
    • This is an optional, very short video (1 to 2 minutes) about the Team’s experience.It can be as simple as recording a video call in which the Team answers questions they’ve prepared ahead of time.
    • The video must have captions and a transcript.
    • We highly encourage Teams to create a video, because these videos are shown at the Awards Ceremony.

Week 7: Prepare for Submission

  • Hold a design review and feedback session with your Team.
  • Review the AIR Judging Form with your Team and identify potential issues to address before submission.
  • Work through potential issues with your Team.
  • Meet with your Team Lead and begin working on the submission worksheet from the AIR Judging Form.
  • Ask your Team for all of the final information needed to host your site after AIR.

Week 8: Final Review and Website Submission

  • Hold a final design review and feedback session with your Team.
  • Attend the Final Countdown event.
  • Your Team must upload the site to the Knowbility server and email the Judging Form to air@knowbility.org by the submission deadline.
  • If you need help, email air@knowbility.org.

Weeks 9–10: Site Deployment (Migration) and Maintenance Plan

After submission, your Team moves your site to its permanent home and provides you with site deployment (migration) and maintenance documentation.

Submit Client Satisfaction Survey

Shortly after websites are submitted, you will be asked to complete a survey evaluating your experience working with your designer/developer Team, and your experience with Knowbility and the competition in general.

It is vital that you submit this evaluation by the deadline. We use your feedback to score the Teams and improve our work with clients. In past competitions, the client’s score for their Team has often been the deciding factor in who wins.

If you do not complete the survey, your Team receives 0 of the 20 available points for this part of the Judging Form.

Attend the Awards Ceremony

  • Mandatory attendance: Each participating client organization must send a representative to who worked with the team.
  • Attend the AIR Awards Ceremony at AccessU, where winners are announced and celebrated in front of the accessibility community. (see the calendar of events for the date and time)