Accessibility program

Details and examples limited or changed to comply with the non disclosure character of the work.

Year: 2021-2024 / Company: McKinsey & Company

Role in the project: Design and Strategic Lead, Initiator

Areas of expertise:
Accessible Design, Change Design, Strategic roadmap

Most utilized skills:
Leadership, connecting the dots, shifting left, storytelling

Overview

I co-founded the volunteering Accessibility Initiative in the organization, which become an official team in August 2023. In the team, I led design and strategy.

Team’s mission: Every colleague of all abilities is supported within the organization technological environment.
In order to achieve that we focused on:

  • Raising awareness in the organization

  • Providing assistive technology

  • Building accessibility into the organization’s products and methods.

Outcomes

Team’s work helped make sure that 100% of colleagues have access to assistive software and hardware, as well as information about the accommodations. We educated product teams and increased accessibility of internal products.

  • We defined internal maturity scale and incorporated it into enterprise inventory management tool after conducing accessibility audit of major tools

  • In collaboration with global HR and organization leadership we designed and piloted the accommodation request process which is truly inclusive, eliminating digital barriers and minimizing the psychological ones

  • The team influenced the strategy of the organization on the global scale to set highest accessibility standards and improve organization accessibility maturity

Work examples

RAISING AWARENESS

In order to create the sustainable change we needed to address minds and hearts of our colleagues. That is why we are focusing on building awareness and understanding. During the internal design conference I presented the inaccessible world as an jungle to draw a simplified parallel which would resonate with audience.

Imagine you are in the jungle. You can't see the path through the thickness of the vegetation. The map you have is written in a language you do not understand. The signs on the map do not make sense. You feel that your throat is dry. You were given a ceramic vase with water. You lift the heavy container and water spill all over your face. This attracts flies. As you try to wave them away you make a couple of steps around and trip on hidden behind the bushes rock, you stumble and drop the vase which cracks and all your water is gone...
You are anxious, you feel unwelcome, this environment and tools you have are not inclusive of your needs. This environment presents itself with barriers that are hard to overcome.

This is a metaphor for a big inaccessible city or an inaccessible website. It reflects a social definition of disability. The disability happens in the interaction of a person with an inaccessible environment.

As part of awareness building I organized and moderated the meeting with colleagues and Valerie Fletcher, the Executive Director of the Institute of Human Centered Design in Boston about the Accessibility and Universal Design.

As a team, we also provide a trainings, and campaigns about assistive technology and accessibility.

PROVIDING ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY

Initially we supported colleagues on individual basis who didn’t know what technology would be helpful to them. We also made sure there is an easy access to information about assistive technology.
With time we built the knowledge base which is available to everyone, we added it to the main menu in technical support portal in organization. We piloted a global process which would improve accessibility and enable colleagues to have easy access to technology they need. We are also introducing practices to ensure change at scale aiming in making our internal technology best in the class.

BUILDING ACCESSIBILITY INTO THE FIRM PRODUCTS AND METHODS

We created assets and offer services which can be used by everyone in the organization

  • Alt text best practices

  • Accessible zoom event

  • Accessible gifs

  • Design Conference “Accessibility in practice” workshop

  • Accessibility consulting for organization tech assets

  • Adding inclusive consideration to internal templates (Inclusive lenses for personas template on image)

  • Advising on the LOPs and compiling accessibility design best practices guidebooks.