Organizing Accessibility: Jumbo’s journey towards an accessible webshop
In this series we will keep you informed about Jumbo’s journey towards a more accessible webshop. This first part discusses the steps we took in 2022 to achieve a significant improvement in digital accessibility.
Most readers of this article probably don’t need an explanation of why digital accessibility is incredibly important. But it never hurts to repeat it:
- Approximately 26% of the residents of the Netherlands have a disability. This includes people who are blind, visually impaired or color-blind, deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, people with severe motor disabilities, individuals with intellectual disabilities or dyslexia, and those with low literacy skills.
- In terms of numbers, this amounts to approximately 4,500,000 people.
- Globally, this amounts to about 1 billion people with disabilities.
There are also additional benefits for people without (or with temporary or situational) disabilities who find certain features useful. Solve for one, extend to many.
Oh, and search engines also love accessible websites.
Jumbo decided to be better
At the end of 2021, LevelLevel conducted a study among the 15 largest webshops in the Netherlands to assess their performance in terms of digital accessibility. In short, Jumbo could do a lot better.
Our customers were not able to place an order on Jumbo.com using a keyboard or screen reader. Users faced difficulties even in creating an account. This was not a good look for the second-largest supermarket in the Netherlands, which truly cares about its customers and aims to make things as uncomplicated as possible.
Accessibility is not integrated into the website. Ordering with a keyboard or screen reader is impossible at Jumbo. Many functions are handled in a popup modal that is difficult to operate or understand if you cannot see. — Level Level, Webwinkel Accessibility onderzoek 2021
There was (and still is) a lot of work to be done!
Starting at the source: our design system
But where do you begin? Within the Jumbo Tech Campus, we are working on Jumbo.com and our native and hybrid mobile apps for customers. We also develop software for handheld scanners, self-service checkouts, and a lot of apps and software for our stores. It’s a huge task to make all of this more accessible.
Doing everything at once is impossible, so having a clear scope is important. For us, the most logical step was to improve the accessibility of our design system, Kompas. Our idea was that by making the building blocks in design and development accessible, we could have the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time.
Outside help
At that time, we didn’t have enough expertise within the Jumbo Tech Campus to conduct a thorough analysis of our design system. Therefore, we hired an external expert to do it with us.
The result was a comprehensive analysis with improvement points for both design and development, which we could easily translate into concrete tasks. We presented the report in our Design and Front-end Chapters and collectively added all the action points as stories to our Kompas backlog.
Over the following months, nearly every designer and front-end developer took on a task and contributed to a more accessible design system. A few major design challenges were solved by a group of three to four designers working together for an afternoon. However, the majority of tasks could be tackled by designers and/or developers individually.
In addition, this attention we gave to our Design System inspired some of our development teams to work independently on accessibility and significantly improved their part of the customer journey.
A 20% improvement in one year!
By the end of 2022, the study was conducted again. We didn’t have high expectations because we felt like we had just started. But to our surprise, we scored 20% better than the previous year.
Jumbo has improved significantly compared to last year. Last year, the order could never be completed because the delivery time couldn’t be selected using the keyboard. This step seems to have been addressed diligently this year, as it now works perfectly with the keyboard and screen reader! The use of dropdown menus and modals has also drastically decreased, making ordering with the keyboard much easier. — Level Level, Webwinkel Accessibility onderzoek 2022
Working together across multiple Chapters, focusing on targeted solutions, and prioritizing the design system has proven to be fruitful. But we still have a long way to go because the real challenge lies ahead of us.
Embedding digital accessibility in an organization
This year, we want to apply the same approach: expert review, tasks, implementation. This time, with a focus on our most important customer journey. Our ambition is to take another significant step forward. We also want to embed accessibility into our workflow, address it at the source, and ensure that we deliver software that meets the guidelines and is regularly tested with a diverse group of people.
This will be our main accessibility challenge: ensuring accessibility is embedded in work processes for (service) designers, developers, and testers. We have already started an Accessibility Guild with representatives from all disciplines. With this group of people, we will plan and find ways to increase awareness and knowledge of digital accessibility within the Jumbo Tech Campus.
So, we still have a lot of work to do, and once we take a few more steps, I will share our progress in a follow-up article. Are you facing a similar challenge with your organization? Let me know; perhaps we can learn from each other or provide inspiration.
Sources
- Hoeveel mensen hebben een beperking in Nederland? — Jeroen Hulscher
- Microsoft Inclusive Design — Microsoft
- Webwinkel Accessibility onderzoek 2021— Level Level
- Webwinkel Accessibility onderzoek 2022 — Level Level
