A Framework to Integrate Accessible Design and Inclusive Research At Scale
Co-authored with Riana Quinn
Written by a product designer (Cat Armistead) and user research ops professional (Riana Quinn) focused on building more accessible and inclusive customer experiences at Wayfair. We hope our framework helps you create a stronger focus on accessibility at your organization, that will benefit both the bottom line and your customers.
This content was presented in Fall 2022 at the UXPA (User Experience Professionals’ Association) conference in Boston. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Basics of digital accessibility
- Our applied framework and relevant case studies
- Our whoas along the way
Remember the People Behind the Products
Digital accessibility is the practice of working to ensure that there are no barriers that prevent interaction with or access to websites or apps by people with disabilities. 1 in 4 US citizens have a disability, and this excludes undiagnosed or temporary disabilities. There are 4 key areas of disability:
The accessibility experience is unique to each person- so when you are unsure, seek to learn and understand more about accessibility and those with lived experience.
Why design for different abilities? The truth is, everyone benefits from designing for different abilities. When we design for someone with a permanent disability, someone with a situational or temporary limitation will also benefit.
Designing with accessibility in mind drives innovation
“When we’re finally able to question the systems that disable us, everyone involved stops seeing our bodies as the problem.” — Liz Jackson
As designers and researchers, we are constantly using, creating, and altering systems. The more we consider how people with disabilities may use our products and begin to question our assumptions, the better these products and systems become.
Our Approach
At Wayfair, our goal is to create a culture of accessibility and ensure that our products, features, and solutions are inclusive. To do this we need to:
- Develop a baseline understanding of accessibility
- Understand where we are excluding people in our experiences and processes
- Actively engage people with accessibility needs in our product development lifecycle
In order to make these goals actionable, we created a framework for accessibility discovery and implementation that can be applied at your organization, regardless of size or experience with accessibility. Every organization is different, so feel free to adapt this framework to meet your needs.
Step 1: Explore & Evaluate
At this stage, you’re just getting started — congratulations! Explore the space, the users, and new tools. Evaluate your processes and systems. Start with Youtube, LinkedIn Learning, & podcasts!
Things that will help you be successful at this point in your journey:
- Curious mindset
- Carving out dedicated time to learn
- Questioning the status quo
What you can do at this stage:
- Explore accessibility topics
- Identify the user interactions in your control
- Evaluate current and prospective tools
- Learn from experts and people with lived experience
Wayfair case study: Research Tool Audit
Context: Our research practice relied heavily on market tools to run research but we lacked an understanding of how usable those tools are for participants with accessibility needs.
Action: The ops team conducted an accessibility audit on our tools, paying close attention to necessary user interactions. We identified key opportunity areas and worked with tooling vendors to understand their position on accessibility and advocate for these improvements.
Key outcomes: This audit led us to 3 formalized accessibility partnerships including Fable, The Carroll Center for the Blind, and Perkins School for the Blind. Fable has been used for ongoing accessibility benchmarking, and the organizational partnerships were leveraged for recruitment in key research projects and protocol evaluation. Additionally, this experience increased our awareness of how accessible our tooling is and highlighted the importance of thinking about accessibility as early as possible. Now, accessibility is a heuristic in our tooling evaluation process when we onboard new tools and renew existing contracts.
Step 2: Collaborate
You have learned about accessibility and you know more than when you got started. Now you’re ready to partner internally and externally to share knowledge and to drive accessibility efforts forward. Here you can start to materialize your efforts into more specific goals.
Things that will help you be successful at this point in your journey:
- Goal setting
- Communication
- Dedicated time
- More people (not just you!)
What you can do at this stage:
- Connect with different groups internally (employee resource groups, legal team, etc)
- Start a conversation with 3rd party accessibility organizations & vendors
- Align with your manager on your bandwidth
Wayfair case study: Inclusive User Recruit
Context: One of our product partners was interested in testing a prototype they were working on, the goal of which was to provide an inclusive shopping experience for blind and low vision users. In order to test this, the team wanted to solicit feedback from users who had lived experience with assistive technology.
Action: The Wayfair Research Ops team partnered with the Carroll Center for the Blind to recruit users who relied on screen readers to access web content.
Key Outcomes: The product team was able to complete 14 user interviews with participants who had lived experience using assistive technology. The interviews gave them valuable user feedback that informed their design decisions. Now, when product teams come with accessibility research questions, we can leverage our existing partnerships to answer them.
Step 3: Scale
At this stage, you should have a group working to increase accessibility knowledge internally. Once you are clear on your goals and your key collaborators, work to move away from a group to setting organizational-wide expectations. This is your chance to amplify your impact and create a ripple effect of accessibility across the whole product or experience.
Things that will help you be successful at this point in your journey:
- Baseline of accessibility education
- Shared future-state vision
- Leadership buy-in
- Adoption of processes
- Cross functional accountability (engineers are responsible for x, designers are responsible for y)
What you can do at this stage:
- Create an adoption plan
- Consider priorities and implement metrics
- Share accessibility content with a broad audience
Wayfair Case Study: Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning
Context: Accessibility is a large, complex topic, and knowledge was siloed to a few people. More specifically, many colleagues at Wayfair were unfamiliar with WCAG and how the guidelines impact their work. We wanted to empower our colleagues to learn more about accessibility and create more inclusive experiences.
Action: We worked with other designers and content strategists to create a visual accessibility checklist to use when designing new experiences. We also started programming monthly learning sessions to create a space to actively learn about accessibility. Past topics include using screen readers, writing good alt text, and the legal case for accessibility.
Key Outcomes: These initiatives established a strong baseline of accessibility expectations at Wayfair, and a library of evergreen accessibility resources to help people meet those expectations. They also reinforce that accessibility is everyone’s responsibility.
The graphics below are thought starters for how you can better integrate accessibility questions and activities into your design and research process.
Step 4: Iterate
This step is something many designers and researchers will be very familiar with. At the iterate stage, you are working to improve the resources and tools that your organization has been using. Get feedback and make improvements accordingly.
Things that will help you be successful at this point in your journey:
- Internal and external feedback loops
- Metrics (this can be attendance at learning sessions, survey results, checklist completion, or the output of a biannual workshop)
What you can do at this stage:
- Identify where you can improve
- Refine resources and processes as needed to
- Design and launch more accessible experiences
Wayfair Case Study: Auditing our Design System for Accessibility
Context: Our design system was growing with our large design team’s needs, but we hadn’t looked beyond basic accessibility requirements for the different components. The design system (Homebase) is the foundation of all design work that happens at Wayfair, so accessibility audits here have a ripple effect.
Action: Our design system designers audited different component variants for one WCAG criteria at a time, and developed an improvement process for failing variants.
Key Outcomes: The audit resulted in 196 total accessibility improvements to our web and app libraries! This means every feature launched using the design system is now also more accessible.
Our Whoas Along the Way
This work is not easy, and we would be remiss if we didn’t mention all the challenging and surprising moments along the way that helped us grow and learn. If and when you encounter these challenges, don’t lose hope!
- We had no experts internally to turn to early on, and lots of questions
- We were reliant on market tools that weren’t as accessible as we thought
- We felt (and continue to feel) like we don’t know enough
- It’s challenging to get 100% adoption on initiatives as you scale
- Silos will always impede your progress
- We can’t assume a baseline knowledge of accessibility of our tools, our competitors, or a baseline of accessibility knowledge internally (even though we are trying to create one)
- 100% accessible is a myth — assistive tech is constantly changing, and a product can’t be 100% accessible across the board. It’s important to check and recheck accessibility and not to consider it a ‘one and done’ exercise
- It’s easy for bug fixing to take over, especially if you’re dealing with lawsuits or working towards a tight deadline. Remember to consider accessibility as early in the process as you can.
As you begin your accessibility journey, and drive more inclusive experiences for your customers to innately drive positive business results, remember that it can start with you!
Helpful Resources
- Our Visual Checklist
- Design Process Outline
- WCAG Guidelines
- Stark Plugin
- Awkward Silences: User Interviews Accessibility Podcast Episode
- Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit
- Designing for Accessibility
- Screen Reader Demo
- Cognitive Accessibility Talk
- Crystal Preston-Watson Talk
- Fable Accessibility Testing Platform
- Linkedin Learning on Accessibility
- The Carroll Center for the Blind
- Perkins School for the Blind
- The Disabled List (Liz Jackson’s organization)
- Jessica Oddi’s Accessibility Resources
