Many of the team members initially thought the process of converting to XML would be a long, arduous process. Many saw this as an “all or nothing” endeavor. The CTG XML team shared their experience with the team members in the first workshop explaining how they approached XML “one document at a time.” As the CTG Webmaster said, “We took one report and did our own prototype. We created the XML structure, which met all Section 508 accessibility standards, and found it to be a very easy conversion. Once we saw that much of our Web site was just a series of documents, the structure we employed in our test conversion could easily be applied to all of our publications and to the Web site as a whole.” He continues, “What we thought was going to be a major undertaking turned into a very easy conversion, allowing us to apply what we learned in our prototype to the whole Web site. Now we were not only compliant with accessibility standards, we knew we would never have to double check this again since it was controlled by one style sheet.”

Once the teams saw that they could approach their own Web sites one document at a time they began to see how it could be an incremental process. They did not need to tackle their whole Web site at once. They started to think of their Web sites not in Web pages, but in documents. As they classified what their Web site contained, they were able to look at the work differently. It was not as daunting as they first imagined. Again, a perceived barrier became less imposing as it was better understood.