Accessibility

Accessibility is a mindset, not just a checklist, and I advocate for it by utilizing the WCAG guidelines. I aim to help teams create inclusive experiences for all users, including those with disabilities or situational challenges. By focusing on accessibility, I ensure clients meet standards and provide seamless experiences. Here are examples of how I collaborate with teams to improve design elements.

 
 

My role


As a member of a neurodiversity group focused on educating people about the different types of cognitive impairments and how design and technology can create more inclusive and accessible products …

• I work with both design and development teams to establish best practices
to bring ADA compliance upstream into the design and code libraries.

• I review and test products and create documentation for remediation.

 

Design and Development support

Accessibility is not a fix; it's a process.

The neurodiversity group to which I belong promotes the idea that everyone involved in the product development lifecycle has a role in making products accessible to people around the globe. By learning about users with disabilities and keeping these users in mind as features, designs, interactions, and code decisions are made and evaluated, we can raise the quality of the user experience for all customers.

Below are the four focus areas where the company has been making time and effort to become more inclusive.

  1. Plan and Lead - Participate in Neurodiversity Leadership Group
    Product managers, project managers, and leadership have a critical role in ensuring a successful accessibility effort. Accessibility must be a priority from the beginning, with direction and strategy pointing to features that include as many people as possible.

  2. Design - Champion accessibility principles in design
    The design team can deliver more inclusive designs by understanding how users interact with our products and consume our digital content.

  3. Develop - Partner with developers and designers to improve tools and processes.
    Developers must be disciplined and thorough in delivering pixel- and interaction-perfect interfaces that maintain the inclusivity of the designs they are given.

  4. Test - Ensure principles are applied
    Automated and manual testing is used to validate that accessibility has been effectively considered in a product.

 

Testing

Customer Facing Attributes

If you are familiar with design heuristics, Customer-facing attributes (CFAs) are in the same family. We use them to systematically determine a design's/product's usability. As experts, we go through a checklist of criteria covering four main topic areas to find flaws design teams may have overlooked.

  1. Ease of use (intuitiveness, accessibility, recognition, satisfaction)

  2. Efficiency (speed, accessibility, user control, recognition)

  3. Accessibility -A11y (Visibility clarity, audibility)

  4. Globalization -G11N depending on the product, the evaluation could include:
    Translation (T9N) and localization (L10N), internationalization (I18n).


Excel screenshot of framework

Screen markup

Screen Markup for screen reader and keyboard user sequence

 

Mapping color plate for contrast & legibility and scoring for WCAG AA and AAA adherence.