Opportunity

Around 2015, the accessibility strategy at my org was very limited – no central group to execute anything meaningful, little to no awareness by development or design, and add-on sets of files to help with one-off accessibility issues. We needed to scale – our clients expected more from us.

Strategy

First, I built a cross-org accessibility coalition, and introduced user testing through partnerships with the excellent “Carroll Center For the Blind”.  I invited designers, engineers, and other key stakeholders in to watch the sessions, and recorded them for wider distribution to set our benchmarks for success.

Around this time, I also drove org-wide education through an internal summit, and began giving talks to our government clients during important meetings in DC.

And since we were also getting ready to build our UX system – there was a clear opportunity to do the right thing from the foundational layer. Spending time with WCAG and ATAG, drawing both directives and concepts from them, and focusing on a semantic HTML and content-first direction allowed me to coordinate every design component with accessibility in mind. I’ve guest-posted about some of the thought process and talked about it on AXSChat.

To make sure that components & the system were executed properly, we also needed to level up development. Implementing tools like aXe into builders workflows, procuring assistive tech and resources to learn them for dev teams to access, and partnering with Level Access for certified application statements (VPATs) and reviews were the next step in our process.

Impact

Accessibility became a core organizational capability. The company established a dedicated accessibility function, while I lead accessible design at scale through the design system and UX operations.

Today, governments (US, UK, Australia, and others) and clients all over the world use & trust our approach to accessibility. I’ve also been able to collab with one of the best in India, our compliance to VPATs has never been higher, and I’m a certified US Trusted Tester. And if you like, tune into our ongoing podcast I still co-host to this day – Accessibilty@Pega.