5. A little about BORN
BORN is a global design agency.
At BORN, we are humans first,
researchers, designers, and strategists
second. Together, we are motivated by a
shared goal — improving people’s lives
through strategic design.
Our Legacy
Mad*Pow → BORN XDS → BORN Group →
BORN by Tech Mahindra Americas
6. BORN: What we do
Experience Strategy
Content Strategy
Data Science
Behavior Change
Design Transformation
User Experience Design
Visual Design
Branding
Strategy Consulting
Research and Testing
Content Production
Digital Marketing
Implementation
Post - Production
SEO / SEM
Strategy Creative Content
8. To me, my AX-
men!
01 Accessibility,
UX, and You
Now it’s your turn!
Strategies! Yay!
Agenda
A case study of BORN’s
accessibility team
Organizational accessibility
maturity levels
Intro to cross-functional
accessibility teams
Lessons learned by doing the
work
03
02
04
Our Accessibility Era:
BORN’s Version
9. Learning outcomes
What can people expect to learn from this presentation?
Understand the basics of organizational accessibility
maturity models
Arguments for building a cross-functional accessibility team
Practical strategies for starting an accessibility team
1
2
3
11. What do we mean when we say
Accessibility?
Accessibility is how well a person can engage with an
equivalent experience of a product, service, or
interaction regardless of their physical, cognitive,
emotional, and social abilities.
12. It’s more than
digital accessibility.
It’s experience accessibility.
MEANINGFUL
Evokes feeling of
success, delight,
and trust
USABLE
Generally usable,
functions as
expected
COMPLIANT
Technically meets
legal requirements
13. Why Accessibility?
More reach
Bigger audience
More conversions
More impact / revenue
Build trust
Yay community
Improve lives
For real.
Better UX
Improves UX for everyone
DEIA
Intersects with DEI work
Avoid lawsuits
It’s the law, my dude
Better tech
Robust code
A11y
14. Where does Accessibility happen?
Everywhere,
everyone.
Accessibility plays a role
at every stage of the UX
process, from research to
development and
beyond.
It’s what you do and how
you do it.
And that means
accessibility is everyone’s
responsibility.
Personas and
Scoping
requirements
User research
with people with
disabilities
Accessible
development
Accessible
UX and visual
design
Testing with
assistive tech
users
16. We can use maturity models to
describe an organization’s
location along a spectrum of what
it means to support accessibility.
17. Where are we?
Accessibility work is ad
hoc, not documented, or
driven by grassroots
efforts
Your organization has
committed to
accessibility and is
focusing on establishing
its policy, processes,
training, and key
partnerships.
Repeatable practices
are in place and the
focus on scaling and
continuing to up-level
the practice.
Initiating Establishing Scaling
Deque’s Accessibility Maturity Model
18. ● Fostering a culture that’s ready for change
● Leadership buy-in
● Staff education and skill development
● Repeatable processes
. . . Building an accessibility team can help you do all of this, and more!
How do we level up?
Focused effort, incremental change.
20. What do we mean when we say Cross-
functional Team?
A group of people (3+) with different roles
and responsibilities in your organization
working together.
21. Why cross-functional teams?
The more champions the better.
● Allows for greater buy-in & participation
● Ability to divide and conquer accessibility tasks
● Supports sustainability - helps protect the team from staff
attrition, such as layoffs or resignations
22. Why cross-functional teams?
Different angles, more solutions.
● Leads to greater innovation and problem-solving.
● Integrates accessibility throughout the development process,
rather during a single design phase
● Allows for resource sharing, such as tools or guidelines
25. In the beginning…
Accessibility is dead, long live Accessibility!
Winter is coming…
Accessibility at our organization had laxed over time (our champions left).
Changing leadership and a looming integration with a larger design
agency, with unknown accessibility chops and resources.
We had dreams! And we were going to make them a reality. But how?
Long time champions, first time organizers.
26. Part 1:
Where are we now?
We need to learn:
● What are the current processes
and cultures around accessibility?
● What knowledge and skills are
present among staff?
Problem to solve:
● We don’t know our current
accessibility maturity.
27. What did we do?
Grounded our planning with research
Conducted a survey & informal interviews
with staff across the organization. Captured
a baseline understanding of interest and
future ideas.
Determined our maturity level
Aligned our organization with accessibility
maturity models and determined our
positioning.
Part 1: Where are we now?
Example survey questions
How familiar are you with
accessibility topics and practices?
How confident are you integrating
accessibility into your own work?
What parts of the design process
does accessibility typical show
up?
In what ways would you like to
bring accessibility into our work
that’s not currently happening?
28. What happened?
Part 1: Where are we now?
Uncovered opportunities for growth
Seeded interest
Identified individual interest and understanding, accessibility practice gaps,
and key barriers to integrating accessibility across the organization.
Started gaining initial buy-in for the accessibility team and found some
champions to join our quest!
29. Accessibility work is ad
hoc, not documented,
or driven by grassroots
efforts
Your organization has
committed to
accessibility and is
focusing on establishing
its policy, processes,
training, and key
partnerships.
Repeatable practices
are in place and the
focus on scaling and
continuing to up-level
the practice.
Initiating Establishing Scaling
BORN’s Initial Accessibility Maturity
Part 1: Where are we now?
30. What did we learn?
Part 1: Where are we now?
We’re not alone!
Mixed methods was a great idea.
More people are interested / know about accessibility than we thought.
Mixed methods research yielded rich perspectives and understanding
Reach more than the usual suspects.
Talking to leadership AND practitioners was good! And sales! Not just the
folks who you think might already touch accessibility.
31. Part 2:
Pull the team together
Known challenges:
● Large, multi-faceted organization
● Silos within the organization
● Participation capacity
Problem to solve:
● It can’t be just Leigh Ann
and Caitlin!
32. What did we do?
Shared our vision
Hosted a “lunch and learn” to share
our research findings and introduce
the idea of an accessibility team.
Kept the conversation going
Revived an accessibility Slack channel
for communication, collaboration,
and resource sharing.
Part 2: Pull the team together
Took the steering wheel
Created a steering committee that meet
weekly (i.e. Leigh Ann & Caitlin)
Invited people to the party
Initiated a full group monthly meeting,
across agencies, open to any and all
33. The steering committee
Part 2: Pull the team together
Don’t do it alone.
● Coordinates team meetings and activities
● Sees and shapes the big picture
● Provides leadership for decision making
● Liaisons between teams, leadership, and points of contact
● Keeps the momentum going
34. BORN Accessibility Team
Part 2: Pull the team together
Teamwork makes the dream work.
● Researchers
● UX and Visual Designers
● Content Strategists
● Frontend Developers
● Sales/Business Development
● Practitioners and managers
● 3 agencies represented
● 4-12 participants in any
given meeting
● Meetings included updates,
shared learning discussions,
project reviews, pep talks
35. The first team meeting
Part 2: Pull the team together
Shape the team, as a team
● Invited people from different
departments across multiple channels
● Asked about accommodations /
preferences before the meetings
● Used Miro board activities to learn:
○ What do you know/your skills
○ What are our team goals
36. What happened?
Part 2: Pull the team together
Launched the accessibility team
Set a tone of collaboration and openness
Identified the team’s strengths, participation capacity, and goals for ourselves and
our organization.
Balanced leadership from the steering committee with collaboration and direction
from the larger group, bringing in voices across the agency.
Found more champions
Identified more people across the organization with skills – or at least interest – in
accessibility; increased awareness of accessibility “initiative”.
37. What did we learn?
Part 2: Pull the team together
Participation will ebb and flow.
Start with your reach.
Understanding how much people can participate grounds expectations.
Starting with our sphere of influence made for more manageable, yet still diverse,
team size. Reaching “middle management” (but not leadership) was still effective.
People want to learn. People want to help.
Even if someone didn’t have knowledge or skills, interest in learning was a big driver
for participation. We didn’t encounter any enemies (at this point).
38. Part 3:
Create a roadmap
Known challenges:
● Need to change the way we work
and the way we think.
● Resources will vary.
● Making changes won’t happen
overnight.
Problem to solve:
● We have big dreams!
How do we get there?
39. What did we do?
Create a plan.
Organized several collaborative workshop sessions with our new
accessibility team to identify goals and activities for our roadmap.
Part 3: Create a roadmap
40. Workshop
Leverage your team
● Defined goals from
previous research, initial
team meeting
● Prioritized outcomes
● Identified activities to
reach those goals
Part 3: Create a roadmap
41. Refine
Keep it focused
● Steering committee
refined and organized
● Full team gave final polish
and priorities
Part 3: Create a roadmap
42. What does this look like?
Part 3: Create a roadmap
● Learning is ad hoc
amongst individuals.
● Resources are
unorganized, siloed,
and/or out of date.
Current State
What are we doing now?
● Coordinate group
learning events
● Develop a resource
library
Activities
What will we do?
● We have a structure to
support continual
learning and foster
development of
accessibility expertise
Goal
What will have changed?
North Star: We stand out as an expert in integrating accessibility into
strategic design, research strategies, and product development.
43. What happened?
Part 3: Create a roadmap
Plotted our route.
Created a living document.
Identified bite-sized, tangible activities of work for people to tackle -and how each
activity fits into the overall goal.
Created a document that we would refer to and revise throughout our first year.
44. What did we learn?
Part 3: Create a roadmap
Prepare for change.
Share our roadmap with leadership earlier.
We encountered new requests and new perspectives that shifted our roadmap
activities and priorities. (A more centralized, easily editable document type would
have been GREAT).
In hindsight, sharing our roadmap with top leadership earlier would have helped
make future activities and requests smoother.
45. Part 4:
Take action
Known challenges:
● Everyone is busy
● Other organizational changes
and shifting priorities
● Unknown level of agency
Problem to solve:
● How can we get people
to do the things?
46. What did we do?
Part 4: Take action
Created working groups.
Invited ourselves to the table and sat down.
Initialized during team meetings, provided structure for team members to
volunteer and collaborate on prioritized activities in mini groups..
Took any opportunity to involve an accessibility perspective, from sales pitches to
internal projects, whether we were invited or not. We volunteered!
47. What happened?
We did things!
Between working groups and steering
committee, some activities on our
roadmap got accomplished.
Part 4: Take action
Ripple effect
As we started to involve ourselves and
spread awareness, we were asked to be
more involved in more projects.
Cross-team bonding
Created connections between teams,
and between agencies.
Confidence boost
Practitioners felt more empowered to
speak up and confident in their work
as they put accessibility into practice.
48. What did we learn?
Working groups worked!
Mini cross-functional teams provided
diverse skills, accountability, and
momentum to get things done.
Part 4: Take action
Not everyone is going to lead.
Some tasks and activities require the
steering committee to tackle.
Pivot.
Organizational changes mean that
priorities, process, and landscape
change. You may need to put
something down to tackle later.
Socializing is hard!
It’s challenging to know who to share
outputs with and when.
50. Accessibility work is ad
hoc, not documented,
or driven by grassroots
efforts
Your organization has
committed to
accessibility and is
focusing on establishing
its policy, processes,
training, and key
partnerships.
Repeatable practices
are in place and the
focus on scaling and
continuing to up-level
the practice.
Initiating Establishing Scaling
BORN’s Current Accessibility Maturity
Epilogue: Is it working?
51. What did we accomplish?
Epilogue: Is it working?
Formalized messaging
Mission Statement, Accessibility Policy,
Capability/Offerings decks
Accessibility on the menu
Accessibility services included in new
sales pitches to prospective clients.
Accessibility in practice
In scope, accessible design
consulting/reviews and web/mobile
accessibility audits for internal and
client projects
Shared resources
Figma annotated design files, BORN-wide
accessibility resource library
52. We conducted a brief survey to understand impact
of the Accessibility Initiative since its inception.
● N=16 of 24; 67% response rate
● Mid-analysis, but we have some early findings
What changed?
Epilogue: Is it working?
53. ● “I have seen major needs on the client side and the BORN teams
advocating for and implementing best practices (to the extent
clients will allow).” (P3)
● “Because of [the Accessibility Initiative], I've dedicated substantial
time to learning about accessible design principles and their
application.” (P16)
● “It's one thing to be aware, it's another to have to be accountable.
This has forced us to really test and understand things.” (P12)
All respondents said their overall awareness of
accessibility increased over the last 12 months.
Epilogue: Is it working?
54. What’s working well?
● Greater learning across the
organization
● Expanded service offerings and
an ability to showcase our
accessibility expertise
● Advocating for human-centered
design
● Thoughtfulness and energy
brought to the team
“How you've handled the
initiative, all the planning and
thoughtfulness… the strategy
behind it, the roadmap, the
level of detail, how you brought
everybody in, the challenge of
integration after integration.
Every time we integrate, it's like
starting over again, but the fact
that you keep going and still
have momentum, and that you
have buy-in.” (P5)
Epilogue: Is it working?
55. Challenges
● Fighting against competing
project priorities
● Need greater buy-in with
top-leadership
● Upskilling requires more
resources
● Missing collaboration with
people with disabilities
“Clients often have business driven
pressure to get things done quickly and
this can lead to them taking a ‘let's do
the minimum that is required of us’
approach, deferring some meaningful
improvements indefinitely.” (P3)
“Having the time built into extremely
tight timelines to ensure accessibility is
a part of the process for a typical client
experience build.” (P14)
Epilogue: Is it working?
56. ● Hold conversations with top
leadership for funding of
training programs and tools
● Build partnerships/work with
people with disabilities.
Where do we go from here?
Epilogue: Is it working?
● Updated roadmap for 2024
● Continue to integrate into
client projects and pitches
● Share progress with the
organization
58. Figure out where you are now
Ground in research — Use mixed methods to capture a baseline
understanding of your current organizational maturity.
Captive diverse insights — Talk to people with different roles
and responsibilities – including leadership – to get different
perspectives on the problem and how others might want to
change the organization.
Share back what you learn.
1
2
3
59. Pull a team together
Find a buddy — Create a small, dedicated steering
committee with diverse perspectives.
Aim for diversity – Involve people with different roles,
responsibilities, backgrounds, and abilities, no matter the
skill or experience with accessibility.
Start within your sphere of influence – Awareness and
involvement will ripple out
1
2
3
Meet people where they’re at – Work with your team to
build a team structure that works for everyone (meeting
cadence, tools, etc.).
4
60. Create a Roadmap
Step by step – Work as a team to define manageable goals
with measurable outcomes.
Prepare to pivot – Be flexible with changing priorities within your
team and your organization.
Show and tell – Share your roadmap with leadership earlier
than you may think.
1
2
3
61. Take action
Get yourself involved – Invite yourself to the table and sit down.
Keep steering, but let others lead – Create smaller working
groups to tackle roadmap activities.
Take a breath – Be prepared to pivot and don’t get
discouraged.
1
2
3
Take time to reflect – Review and measure accomplishments
and look forward to where you’re going next.
4
62. In closing….
● You don’t have to be alone! You don't have to do it all!
● Building a team of champions takes time, but it makes a
difference.
● It might feel chaotic, but you’re likely still progressing
● You (and your cross-functional team) can do it! :)
LA kick us off - Hello! Welcome to our post-lunch conversation about Accessibility and Organizational change. We’re excited you’re here today and we hope this is an engaging presentation about how to start your own cross-functional accessibility team at your own organization. There’s candy up front if you need a little pick-me up!
Who are we! Let’s introduce ourselves. I’ll pass it over to Caitlin.
My name is Caitlin Gebhard, my pronouns are They/Them. I’m a Senior Content Strategist at BORN. I’m heading into year 3 here, but before this my background was in scholarly publishing like medical journals, and publishing technology. Here, I focus on content strategy, inclusive design, and integrating accessibility into the many different things we do here.
My name is Leigh Ann Mesiti Caulfield. Pronouns She/Her. I am a Senior Experience Researcher at BORN. I’ve been here for just under 2 years, but previously spent over a decade at Museum of Science in Boston in their research and evaluation dept. Much of my work at the Museum focused on creating physical and digital accessible experiences for a range of audiences. At BORN I conduct discovery research and user testing with clients to help them make data informed decisions about their products and services.
LA continue. A little about BORN. We are a global design agency. Humans first, researchers, designers, and strategists second. We work on projects that improve people’s lives through strategic design. Our organization has gone through a lot of changes, as you will likely pick up from today’s presentation, but Tech Mahindra acquired Mad*Pow, We Make Websites, & BORN Group. Several integrations later, all legacy agencies are now known as BORN by Tech Mahindra Americas.
At BORN we work on projects from end to end- from the early design and strategy side, to developing content, and implementation on the dev side.
Here is what we plan to cover today. We’ll start off with some basics around Organizational Accessibility and maturity levels. We’ll then talk about cross-functional accessibility teams. We’ll spend a bulk of our time discussing our approach at BORN in the form of a case study. And then we’ll close out with some practical strategies and lessons learned that we hope will inspire you to begin this work at your own organization.
LA end. After today’s talk, we hope you’ll understand basics around organizational accessibility & accessibility maternity models, understand how a cross-functional accessibility team can help you move this work forward, and take away some practical strategies for launching an initiative at your organization. Now I’m going to turn it over to Caitlin.
CG start: Let’s set the foundation for what we’re talking about. Accessibility, UX, and You.
What do we mean when we say Accessibility. The definition we use is intentionally broad.
[Read slide]
The part to focus on is “equivalent experience”. When we design and build, it’s more than Digital Accessibility — more than making sure the technology is checking the boxes on the accessibility standards checklist. We’re trying to create accessible experiences that include but go beyond the digital artifacts.
In the same way we approach human-centered design to make experiences more than functional, we approach Accessibility as a way to make experiences more than compliant, more than usable, but also meaningful for as many people as possible, including and especially people with disabilities.
If you’re here to listen to how one might help make their organization more accessible, you probably have a good handle on why accessibility is important, so we’re keeping this brief:
[Read slide, ending on Improve Lives]
Accessibility isn’t a one-and-done. In a product or service lifecycle, accessibility happens (or should happen) at each phase, from research through visual design to development and beyond. It should be a factor in what we do in our work, as well as how we do it. Our tools, our processes, even the way we interact with each other should be accessible. At the end of the day, accessibility is everyone’s responsibility.
That sounds great, Caitlin! But it’s not happening
A lot of organizations and product teams struggle to integrate accessibility.
We have a bar chart from a Deque presentation on accessibility maturity levels that shows 9 common reasons and how often surveyed participants said it was a problem.
[Read the top 1, then the other reasons] Note that 0% answered, we have not encountered any challenges.
When it comes to how well our organization does accessibility, we can use what’s called a maturity model to describe what’s going on.
A maturity model is a framework that help us assess and guide our progression through defined stages of development, like levels in a video game.There are many different frameworks for accessibility, like from W3C or LevelAccess’s DAMM. We use Deque’s because it’s pretty simple and straightforward with only three levels:
[read the slide]
How do you level up? It really depends on your organization. Deque and other organizations highlight some key changes: [read slide]
This may look different across organizations.
LA start here. “To me, my AX- Men” (get it, AX/A11y men)? This section will focus on how to start a cross-functional accessibility team.
What do we mean when we say, cross-functional Team? We mean a group of 3+ individuals that come together around accessibility. You want a team with a diversity of skills and perspectives, who are prepared to tackle complex accessibility problems. This could be representation from different departments or even individuals with accessibility background from previous roles/work. And don’t discount interest or passion about this topic - it’s a great starting place for being part of the team.
Why a cross-functional team. We believe the more champions the better. This allows you to get greater buy-in across an organization. It gives you the ability to divide and conquer different accessibility tasks that will come your way as you dive into this work. It will also help your Initiative be more sustainable. At this time, staff may be changing a lot, and having more champions means that your momentum hopefully won’t end when someone leaves.
Cross-functional teams also allow you to look at a problem from different angles- esp when you have different departments or disciplines at the table. This can lead to greater innovation and problem solving, it also encourages integration of accessibility at different parts of the development process - rather during one stage. It also provides opportunities for resource sharing. Different people may use different tools or consult different documentation when approaching accessibility - and those could be useful for you as well.
Main takeaway - cross functional teams are critical for effective and sustainable organizational change. And we’ll talk more about how our team tackled change at our own organization.
Ok, here begins our own journey with launching an accessibility initiative (or Era - in the words of T. Swift)
Accessibility is Dead- long live accessibility!
This all started because Caitlin and I both shared a passion for accessibility. We recognized that our organization's commitment to accessibility had lapsed over time - champions left, priorities changed. We saw a need for reviving this practice.
Things were changing A LOT within in our organization. Leadership turnover and also an integration with the larger design agency. We didn’t really know much about the larger agency or other sister agencies that were acquired with us. Not sure how accessibility was centered (or not) at their own orgs.
Caitlin and I identify as “long time champions, first time organizers”
-We both came to a11y through different experiences/backgrounds. We had interacted with accessibility in previous lives, but this was the first time either of us were starting a practice around accessibility from the ground up.
Part 1: Where are we now?
The first thing we needed to figure out was where are we now? What is our current maturity when it comes to accessibility.
The two of us were New-er to the organization. We knew that many teams were siloed and it was hard to know what was going on.
We wanted to learn how, if at all, people thought about accessibility internally and what knowledge or skills might be present among our staff.
So, we did some research! We conducted a survey and informal interviews with staff that represented different areas and levels of the organization. This helped us understand our baseline. We covered topics like familiarity and skills related to accessibility, questions about a11y, where accessibility shows up and does not in our current workflows. We also aligned ourselves with the maturity level that best fit our current status.
So what happened - we learned a lot from the research that we conducted.
All respondents were at least “somewhat familiar” with accessibility topics and practices and everyone wanted to learn more.
The Delivery and Sales teams wanted more transparency into how accessibility shows up in each other's work, and how teams can better support one another.
Internal processes should be audited for accessibility alignment so we can grow our maturity.
Consider framing accessibility work in ways that resonate with internal and external audiences.
This information both helped us see areas for growth and also helped us get initial buy-in for starting a team
We also used this information to articulate our Accessibility Maturity - we were in the Initiating phase. Accessibility was being considered in different people’s work, on certain client projects, but it was not being applied consistently and there were not policies around how to integrate accessibility at our organization.
LA end. These first fact finding steps helped us learn that - we’re not alone! More people were interested in accessibility and starting this practice than we imagined. We liked the mixed-methods approach - the survey gave us some rating information, while the interviews gave us some rich responses that contextualized the survey. And we were glad that we surveyed more than just designers - we talked to leadership and sales staff, which enriched our perspective.
Start CG
Leigh Ann and I had put in a lot of work to understand where things stood, but we knew that to really make changes, it couldn’t just be the two of us. It was time to pull the team together.
We also knew that it might not be easy. [read challenges… everyone was busy]
What did we do?
First, we shared our vision…
Although we didn’t call ourselves this at first, Leigh Ann and I continued to meet, but now at weekly steering committee meetings where we schemed and plotted our next moves.
We also revived Slack….
And last but not least, we got the party started. Using a running invite list from survey, … etc.
A little about the steering committee. We split the leadership of the accessibility team between the two of us, each of us bringing very different background and skills and perspectives to the table. We’re a cross-functional mini team. As a team, we… [read slide]
No matter what client work we have going, our weekly meetings help us keep each other accountable and keep the momentum.
Invited people from different departments, using an “are you interested in joining us” question end of the survey, interest gathered from attendance of lunch and learn, and posted in various slack channels. We also talked to leadership about interested individuals across agencies, who we hadn’t really met yet.
Before the meeting, we set expectations for what we would be doing in the first meeting and asked people to share any accommodations or preferences they might have with us.
In the first meeting, we did a few different activities in a Miro board to learn [read slide]
We ended up using Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard tool, to help us guide meetings, take notes, do collab activities, and create documentation for later – People appreciated async options. Acknowledge this did not pose AX issues for our team, but ask your team!
So what ended up happening?
Well, we launched the accessibility team!
[read the slide]
Looking back at those first few months of the team, we learned a few things. [read the slide]
Participation: Timecodes needed for some to participate, client responsibilities - limits on participation despite passion
We have a team. We have big dreams! But how do we get there?
We knew that we wanted to make some big changes in the organization, the way we work and the way we think. But our resources – namely, all of our time – will vary and will probably be eaten up by other projects most of the time. Change would take time.
We needed a roadmap.
So we did that. We hosted several collaborative workshop sessions with our new accessibility team. We were able to leverage perspectives from different parts of the organization to build a robust roadmap.
In the first activity, we gathered goals from….
[read slide]
Collab activity: Define and prioritize goals (from the first meeting, and initial research findings), and identify activities to reach those goals
LA start here. The final part of our story refers to Taking Action. How could we get people to do the things? We have a roadmap with accessibility activities and goals, but we know everyone is busy, and there are organizational changes all the time that shift priorities and brainspace.
We decided to create working groups - smaller teams that could collaborate on specific roadmap activities. We hoped that these smaller teams would be able to rally around an activity of their choosing and take ownership of pieces of the initiative. And that this would produce different deliverables that would round out the initiative.
As a steering committee, we also tried to take any opportunity to insert ourselves into different workflows. Be that sales pitches, internal projects, lunch and learns. Anywhere that could use insight from an accessibility perspective.
The plan started to work! We got things done. As our deliverables were shared, our involvement grew. We were seeing accessibility Incorporated into more billable projects, even as client requirements from project starts. We were also bonding as a team around this topic - which was good relationship building between our discipline teams and between legacy agencies.
Through this, we learned that some working groups hit it off immediately and some did not. Some teams felt comfortable taking tasks and running with them, while others did not. And it’s ok that no everyone is going to lead. We learned that some activities might need to tackled by the steering team because they have a birds eye view of everything that’s happening and can leverage that to develop what might be needed in the moment.
We also learned that you have to be ready to pivot. We tried to Spot opportunities to integrate accessibility, whether it was on our roadmap or not (i.e. sales lunch and learn, BORN website audit, pitch support).
And also, socializing is hard. When an organization has many siloes and leadership is changing and new projects are coming and going, it’s hard to know what to share when and with who. This is something we continue to work on.
So her we are now. And asking ourselves - is it working? Currently, we are taking inventory of our progress to-date, which includes reflecting on our maturity model, identifying tangible outputs, and surveying staff about Initiative impact.
Based on everything we’ve completed and learned - we have moved up a level in accessibility maturity. We have a commitment to accessibility that was not there before. We have documentation to back it up, and we are working on getting more resources for everyone to do this work.
Since launching our cross-functional team, we have formalized messaging (i.e. mission statement, policy, capabilities decks), We have added accessibility to our menu of offerings in new pitches to clients, we have a processes in place to review design files and conduct audits, and we have a shared a11y resource library. We’ve done so much!
We also conducted a brief survey with staff who have interfaced with the Accessibility Initiative in any way - be that directly or indirectly. We’re still processing this data, but we have some early findings.
All respondents said that their overall awareness of accessibility increased over the last 12 months - which is amazing to hear. Respondents discussed changes to client projects and scoping and changes to the way they do their work. There is a level of accountability that wasn’t there before.
Respondents shared thoughts on what they’ve appreciated about this initiative and cross-functional team - there’s been greater learning across the org, we expanded our service offerings and can showcase our expertise in this area, we’re promoting a practice that is all about human centered design, and there’s been great energy and thoughtfulness brought to how this whole team has taken shape.
But, there are still some challenges to reaching our full impact. As always, there are competing project priorities that make accessibility hard to integrate. Staff are also asking for more resources for upskilling - trainings, certifications, and tools to do this work effectively and efficiently. We’ve also struggled to get buy-in with top leadership - and that’s something we’re actively trying to tackle so we are able to get more resources allocated for this work.
And one part of our roadmap that we have not made strides in as we had hoped is collaborating with people with disabilities. On our internal teams or through external partnerships.
So where do we go from here? First, we updated our roadmap for 2024 - made sure that the roadmap reflects our progress to-date and also takes into account the changing organization and priorities. We have continued to integrate accessibility into client projects and pitches, which is exciting. We have been presenting to top leadership to hopefully get more resources, like funding for a research platform that gives us access to testing with people with disabilities, and we are planning to share our progress and learning from the recent survey back with the team and organization. We’ve come a long way, but there’s more we can accomplish together in the next year.
