Making Banking Experiences More Accessible to People of All Abilities

By: Next at Chase Editorial Team

As Head of Digital Accessibility for Chase for nearly two years, an accessibility advocate since 2006, and a technology industry veteran for 25 years, James Green has been an active leader in making banking technology more accessible for all. He has had a front seat developing processes, policies and witnessing the growth (and growing pains) of accessibility.

During his tenure with Chase, the bank has earned unsolicited recognition for its progress in this space twice in the last year. First, in July 2023 the American Council of the Blind recognized Chase with their “James R. Olsen Distinguished Service Award” in recognition of their exemplary attention to accessibility in the design of their website and app, and most recently Chase also earned the Disability Matters’ Marketplace Award for ongoing initiatives and developing one of the best banking apps for accessibility.

We spoke with James about his experiences and vision for the accessibility space, how his team at Chase is evolving to best serve customers, and moving from awareness to action when thinking about what it means to make banking accessible for all.

How did you first enter the accessibility space, and why?

I began my career as a Management Consultant focused on IT Strategy and Design, eventually managing a Usability/User Research practice. I really enjoyed User Experience — the discovery, the problem solving, bringing the potential out of an interface to make the user’s experience more efficient and pleasing. After that, I worked for a credit card company and it was there that I zeroed in on accessibility, which is really the same as user experience, but with a focus on users with disabilities. It has those same empathy and problem-solving aspects, but often we’re not just working to make an experience more efficient or enjoyable, we’re also making it possible. I love working in a field that helps ensure we are the bank for everyone.

Why is this important to you and the firm?

Having the ability to manage your money is such an important dimension to personal independence and everyone should have access to tools that allow them to do that. In 2006 the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities agreed that accessibility is a human right. It’s about personal agency, privacy, dignity, and freedom. Society is finally at a point where we can leverage technology to develop tools that work for everyone, regardless of ability.

It’s not only important we do this because it’s the right thing to do as we live up to our purpose to be the bank for all, but it’s also just good business. People with disabilities (along with their friends and family) control $10 trillion in disposable income and when asked, they say that more than 75% of their digital experiences end in failures. Very few companies even bother to compete in this space, so there is a huge opportunity for us to create value while serving our customers.

What brought you to Chase?

Working for a company with the scale that Chase has was very intriguing to me as it would create new challenges beyond solving for accessibility at the customer, team or normal org level. How do you keep such a large and distributed organization aligned, trained, informed, equipped, and constantly improving? Beyond that exciting challenge, it was the bank’s reputation, the high level of accessibility maturity of the Chase Mobile App® and web applications, and the people I met. Everyone was so smart, nice, and singularly focused on the experience of their customers — a great environment to tackle these important opportunities!

As I mentioned, at Chase, the accessibility program was already quite mature when I got here, and as we’ve begun to transition from a more passive support team to actively informing, enabling, and providing SME, we are seeing teams from across the firm come to us for help. Everyone’s goal is to consistently invest in our customers’ experiences, and that includes making sure we don’t have accessibility gaps. At the end of the day, accessibility isn’t a banking compliance function, something that you do if defects are found — it’s a design function about understanding and building products for people, and we’re doing that to provide access to the banking products and services people need, without friction.

We’re building on a good, deeply entrenched corporate culture and habits that approach design with people at the center of our efforts. Accessibility fits right into that model. Chase is already meeting industry standards, but we can’t stop there. There is still plenty of work to be done, and we’re always striving to do better.

How is your team evolving to address accessibility gaps?

Over the past couple years, we’ve identified structural changes to the accessibility team that will help us more efficiently serve our internal partners, and ultimately our customers, with more efficient planning, design and oversight to close gaps. The need for accessibility is apparent, and so is the need for us to be agile in how we are structured and how we work.

We merged our Technical Standards, Tools, and Training teams into one Digital Accessibility Products team. The things they build are all about enabling Chase staff to do accessibility better, and it made sense to run that team like the many externally facing Product teams out there building products for our customers.

Next, we expanded our Digital Accessibility Oversight team that provides governance and reporting to teams following our playbook and utilizing the “products” I mentioned before. They will also be looking at how we can better verify testing results, confirm vendors are meeting standards, and whether potential acquisitions are carrying accessibility debt that could bring hidden costs and risk to the firm.

Finally, our newly formed Digital Accessibility Services team provides subject matter expertise, testing, and PDF document remediation to teams across Chase as they need it.

Our three new teams don’t work in silos. The firm has several other teams that work in the accessibility space, and we work closely with them. There’s a ton of people, investment, and attention to disability and accessibility and I’m pleased to see all of that continue to grow.

What does your team’s process look like when bringing an accessibility product or feature to life?

It all starts with enablement from our internal accessibility products — our firmwide technical standards, tools for staff, and training available to all JPMC staff globally. That knowledge, tools, and process allow teams to take the right steps to meet WCAG 2, the international guidelines to which we align our firmwide standards. Our accessibility advisors provide mentoring, design and code reviews, defect triage, and friendly advice throughout design, development, and testing of Chase products. The process includes governance and meeting key milestones for the process to continue, including rigorous testing of code and content. These steps in the process help ensure that our products are reliable and accessible at launch, and we conduct regular process audits to make sure we continue to adhere to and exceed industry and our own standards. It all comes down to prioritizing and testing to do all we can to provide the accessibility that our customers require and expect when they bank with us.

What are some key features that help our customers?

• Non-decorative images including charts and graphs have alternative text so customers using a screen reader (commonly used by blind and low-vision individuals) can have content described to them.
• Colors are chosen to support users with colorblindness or low vision and regular text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 over its background to support the contrast sensitivity loss associated with reduced vision.
• Media players provide captions and audio descriptions so that users who may be blind or deaf have access to multimedia content. Control features to operate media players are built to accessibility standards and are intuitive to use.
• Products are keyboard operable allowing customers with vision impairments and/or dexterity limitations to interact with and operate features without a mouse.
• Dark Mode, one of our features most requested by customers with disabilities as it’s helpful for certain vision challenges, is also a favorite of many users across the board, highlighting the important fact that accessible products are better products and when you design for extreme users, everyone benefits.

What do you look for in talent joining your team?

Obviously, skills and experience in accessibility help but even more important, a true dedication to making the best experience for all of our customers.

What is your advice for teams building new apps and experiences?

The most important recommendation is to engage accessibility partners early in the process, so you can build technology that works for everyone, from the get-go. Learn about your users, get to know them, and remember that accessibility isn’t about reducing defects, it’s about designing for users the right way. Do that, and the defects take care of themselves.

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JPMorgan Chase is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/Veterans

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