A great day for digital accessibility at Sainsbury’s

Celebrating GAAD 2019

Sainsbury’s celebrated Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) 2019 with a whole range of activities, including digital accessibility training sessions, product showcases, and a ‘Meet the Customer’ event for colleagues.

It’s the third year we’ve held an event like this, and each year it gets bigger and better. This time, we focused on low vision. Here are my highlights:

Bryn’s £200 challenge

Byrn Anderson, Accessibility Product Expert, has low vision as a result of albinism, and when it comes to grocery shopping online, his partner usually takes care of it as it’s easier.

We gave Bryn £200 to spend with Sainsbury’s Group — using only digital products that were accessible to him — and asked him to share his experiences with us. His story was a powerful insight into life with low vision, and he gave some tangible areas for improving our websites and apps such as fully supporting text resizing to avoid losing any content, and some great ideas on how we could innovate them further.

Bryn Anderson on stage with a still of The Twins from the Matrix film in the background.

A close up of Bryn’s eyes. Photo from Bryn’s presentation.

There are 2 million people in the UK who live with a vision impairment which affects their everyday life* and by improving access for these users we can enhance the experience for everyone.
*Source: RNIB

Sainsbury’s website with browser zoom set to 125% on desktop 1600 x 900, and 150% on iOS. Slide from Bryn’s presentation.

2. Team Nectar sharing the accessibility love

Accessibility is a huge topic, and getting it right isn’t easy. So it’s always really inspiring to hear stories of where real progress is being made.

The team working on the new Nectar app are going the extra mile to make sure accessibility is considered at every stage of the product, baking accessibility principles into the design and build, and testing with customers of all ages along the way.

“Considering scaling from the earliest point in the design process.” Nectar team presenting on stage.

“Small steps. We’re including a few accessibility tickets in every sprint, across all platforms.” Slide from Nectar presentation.

Text resizing well to largest setting on mobile. Slide from Nectar presentation.

3. The whole team came together to make it happen

Putting on an event like this is a lot of hard work. But we have a fantastic Digital Experience team who are passionate about accessibility and who made sure it was a success.

To everyone who helped with shaping our training courses, organising the event, hosting our guests, sharing their stories and experiences — thank you, we couldn’t have done it without you.

“2,000,000 people have sight loss that severely impacts everyday life.” Source RNIB. Katherine presenting on stage.

Designers trying out virtual reality impairment simulators.

The team at the event.

Sainsbury’s are proud to host the London Accessibility meetup.
For more information https://www.meetup.com/London-Accessibility-Meetup/