Designing for accessibility = outcomes
How one color change led to 18% growth
Accessible design isn’t just good design. In healthcare, it’s our business. At Oscar, we serve a broad base of members who come to us in various states of sickness and health. This means our products need to be designed for all our members — across age, access and ability.
An accessibility primer
Accessibility means that all users can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with websites and tools without barriers. Standards are defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). As designers in government-regulated spaces, these standards aren’t just the right thing to do, they also keep us compliant.
At one point or another, we will all have a disability. Microsoft Inclusive Design illustrates the variety of permanent, temporary or situational disabilities we experience:
These could include booking a doctor’s appointment in a feverish, delirious state. Or getting a quote for health insurance after seeing an awesome wall mural from the sidewalk, with the glare of the sun on your screen.
TL;DR: Accessibility benefits all users, no matter their circumstances. This is also called the Curb Cut Effect.
An obvious fix
When looking into design optimizations in our health insurance enrollment product, an immediate sore thumb stuck out.
Our enrollment page (nicknamed the ‘Madlib’ internally), was by all possible measures, not accessible. The color contrast for text over a background should be 4.5:1 — the Madlib contrast came back at a mere 1.76:1.
This means that users who are colorblind, have poor vision, or have a lower quality screen could not clearly perceive the required inputs when getting a quote on Oscar.
The fix seemed obvious. We explored a variety of alternate colors that would improve readability for all our users. We then A|B|C tested the designs:
Surprising results
In just four days, the white design (which has the highest contrast ratio) led to an 18% higher Lead Generation Rate (LGR) than the poor contrast teal design.
This win is expected to drive more than 800 enrollments in Oscar health insurance.
Special thanks to my team, particularly Gabriela Lawrowska, Adrian Harding, Stephen Kalmakis, Liz Rodan & Alessandro Cetera, who helped make this possible.
To learn more about accessibility, why it matters, and how to account for it in your work:
7 things every designer needs to know about accessibility
Inclusive design: It’s your job
Warning developers about accessibility violations at Oscar (by Tai Klen + Pete Zalewski)
