Accessibility at AVIV, why and how?
WHEN UX DOESN’T CONSIDER ALL USERS, SHOULDN’T IT BE KNOWN AS “SOME USER EXPERIENCE” OR… SUX?
— BILLY GREGORY
My journey started when I was still a frontend developer.
One day just after lunch break I was wiping my glasses, and I don’t know how, but I ended up breaking them in half! I had to work for the rest of the day without glasses. Nothing on my screen was readable, so I increased the font size 3 to 4 times. Our website wasn’t ready for that… At this moment, I have started searching how users that have this kind of disability use the internet, computers, and phones, and discovered the world of accessibility.
What lies behind “Accessibility”?
Accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of designing and developing content that anyone can use regardless of their capabilities, and more precisely people with disabilities. Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the web, including Cognitive, Visual, Auditory, Physical, and Speech.
But, in reality, accessibility is part of usability, as it also benefits people without disabilities or in a temporary disability situation like having a broken arm or holding a baby. We can all be in a situation that prevents us from using digital services as we normally do and as we age, our abilities change and we will most likely need assistive technologies.
What does this mean for AVIV?
Our companies mission is to “Unlock everyone’s perfect place” and by that, it’s essential to us that everyone can use our products. To be true to our core values, our products must be as accessible as possible.
Where are we at and what is planned?
We still are in an organizational phase and trying to “shift left” mentalities around accessibility. “Shift left” means to include accessibility at the very beginning of what we want to accomplish: from building a new product to simply writing internal communication.
Although the accessibility program is still in its early stages, the basic framework has already been sketched out. The AVIV Platform Experience has a dedicated accessibility team working as a hub, providing guidelines, feedback, training, audits, and advising on accessibility issues.
At the moment, all the expertise is centralized in this team, but we plan to train or recruit experts in every other pillar to spread the knowledge more broadly. The hub will focus its effort on managing the audits and accessibility status, raising awareness by providing training, creating events. As well as communicating internally and externally, while the pillar experts focus on remediation of accessibility issues.
Leveraging our White Label initiative and Design System
The quickest way to achieve a good accessibility status on our web and app products is for a group like ours, to do the work once and replicated on each of our platforms.
We have two solutions to help us with that: Design System and White-label.
Design systems act as a centralized repository of design principles, guidelines and components that ensure visual and functional consistency across a range of products and platforms. By incorporating accessibility guidelines into the design system, we can establish a unified approach to accessibility that is followed consistently throughout all our platforms. This ensures that accessibility features are not an afterthought but embedded into the design process from the outset.
White-label products offer a valuable pathway to building better accessibility by providing a pre-built framework with essential accessibility features. Incorporating the Design System into white-label products helps to gain time and improve the consistent application of accessibility features such as colour contrast or keyboard navigation.
This dual solution when combined, creates a predictable and familiar experience for users, making it easier for them to navigate and engage with the product.
Focused remediation
While creating new products with accessibility in mind, we still have legacy problems to take care of.
To have the most impact with less effort, we have chosen to focus on fixing the 15 of 50 A /AA criteria that Deque System reported having the most issues throughout their audits.
Conclusion
We are still in the early phase of our Accessibility Program as a company. I think that accessibility should be taught thoroughly to Frontend Developers and Designers as a core part of their training. It is harder to switch mentalities by pondering the question “is this accessible?” at every step of their job. That said it’s never too late to learn about accessibility.
It only takes one person to make a change for the better and therefore produce a more accessible world… And this person can be you. 😘
