What is digital accessibility and how to align existing products with upcoming laws and regulations?
Accessibility
Project Management
Industry:
Consumer Goods
Market:
EU
Year:
2023
Duration:
3 months
My role:
Design Team Lead
Client:
Second world’s largest consumer goods company providing products in the laundry and cleaning, paper, beauty care, food and beverage, and health care segments.
Problem
With the European Accessibility Act approaching, a major global Consumer Goods Company wanted to get a head start. They contacted our team to learn about digital accessibility, what will be expected of their services by 2025, and how to handle audits and remediation. We specifically focused on their e-commerce platforms for dental professionals.
My role
Initially, I was set to be a senior product designer on the project. However, on the first day, the design team lead resigned unexpectedly. Seeing my potential, our manager decided to promote me to the lead role, believing I was ready to take on the challenge.
I managed a team of two designers and a business analyst, developed the project plan, and conducted educational workshops for the client team.
Educational workshops
The client wanted to learn more about accessibility and how to tackle it to meet global standards.
We organized "Inspiration Sessions" to educate them, raise awareness, and highlight why web accessibility is so important. Our goal was to help the client understand accessibility, align with global standards, and improve their websites systematically.
What is Digital Accessibility?
In our communication, we focused on digital accessibility as a life-centric approach, as it views customers in their full lives and adapts to their ever-changing needs. In return, this approach unlocks new business growth as it increases the customer base and creates a better user experience for all.
Why Should We Care about Digital Accessibility?
Knowing we were dealing with a large corporation, we aimed to speak their language and present compelling arguments. We focused on three key reasons businesses should prioritize digital accessibility, emphasizing the financial benefits the most.
Implementing knowledge
The client wanted to understand their digital services' current accessibility status, figure out what improvements were needed, and prioritize them. We did a WCAG assessment to spot gaps and opportunities for improvement, focusing on impact, severity, and business priorities, covering all the key areas of their digital products.
Our strategy was based on four distinct phases:
Assess
Evaluate the accessibility maturity level of digital products through technical audits and qualitative assessments.
Discover gaps & opportunities to improve based on impact, severity, and business priorities.
Plan
Analyze workload for different streams (content, design, and dev).
Develop a roadmap for implementing the strategic initiatives, define timelines and responsibilities
Create user stories for the fixing phase with detailed task lists.
Include AI experts and use Gen AI where we see fit.
Improve
Create design guidelines for accessible design as well as recommendations documents for the team responsible for related content delivery.
Create high-fidelity prototypes of screens requiring accessibility fixes.
Implement fixes
Sustain
Constantly monitor and measure compliance, collect feedback, stay updated, and discover new opportunities for improvement.
The outcome
What was achieved? We identified key areas to make the client's digital services more inclusive and boosted their compliance with legal and technical accessibility standards. We equipped their project team with the knowledge and tools to keep accessibility efforts longterm. Plus, we set the stage for future accessibility checks and improvements, ensuring they stay on track.
Personal learnings
This project offered significant insights and growth opportunities for me. Stepping into the role of design team lead unexpectedly taught me the importance of flexibility and readiness to seize leadership opportunities. I honed my skills in project planning and team empowerment and realized the critical role of clear communication and tailoring messaging to the listeners.
This project established my reputation within our team as the accessibility expert, which led to my appointment as the official SPOC for Accessibility for Poland in our organization. This role allowed me to lead a team of passionate accessibility enthusiasts, guiding them to become experts in the field.
