Growing up accessible
The challenge
Accessibility was an after thought in UX
Designers were not trained or motivated to design for inclusion
Minimal consulting with Accessibility staff, mostly with engineers
Feature teams responded to issues, but they were not being proactive
Bringing teams together
Connecting workflows
I led the effort to connect the workflow between our two teams
Integrated A11y input and review checkpoints into our design system workflows
Project: Accessible color tokens
My part
I established new designer onboarding to include A11y
I helped up level DS team understanding
Integrated A11y staff into DS reviews and office hours
I helped launch a company wide Accessibility Champions program with A11y PM
I led multiple accessibility projects including native app text resizing and web focus indicators
Project: Text Resizing
Partnering with my teammate and app designers we explored ways to better support native iOS/Android system settings for text size.
Previous app version ignored OS text resizing - not accessible
Designed a proportional scale to balance hierarchy of the max size (200%) across the type ramp
Worked with engineers to test and refine sizes
Collaborated with app designers to make layouts responsive to large text sizes
Read the Full Article on Medium: Text Resizing - Flexible Components for Improved Accessibility
Project: Focus Indicators
As the design language evolved, our previous focus indicator style needed updates.
Surveyed a range of design systems to compare focus treatments
Proposed style updates that retained clarity and usability for customers that rely on keyboard navigation
Partnered with new lead User Researcher for Inclusion to test the new style against the old style - our first accessibility related test at the company
Test results showed that the new style maintained or improved accessibility/ usability
Project: Accessibility Champions program
Partnered with accessibility product manager to build a new ambassadors program
Helped write the training courses for participants, (L1, L2, L3)
Hosted monthly meetings to showcase accessible wins across the company
Art directed the fun branding created by my teammates
Promoted the program at org wide events
We grew to 50 employees in a year
Enabled influence beyond UX and engineering roles, into Product, Legal, HR, and more
Reflections
Close connections
Difficult to add new processes expectations for product feature teams
Used higher level goals to promote improvements to process
Partnering with inclusive design initiatives, employee resource group
Champions program spread the knowledge and discussion beyond our small teams
Let's connect :)
I can share more about this project when we meet.