I teamed up to achieve for inr.pt the gold stamp for accessibility and usability, a UX standard from AMA – Administrative Modernization Agency.

It was 2 months deep dive into user research and accessibility. My motivation – Making the world (a tiny part) better for people with disabilities, now!

Here are my key takeaways:

Fear not! We don’t need a team of super-heroes to improve the accessibility of our digital products dramatically. We do need:

  1. A small product team willing to unlearn what they think is obvious by their eyes and previous individual experience.
  2. A team that at its heart remain missionaries driven and engaged with the common purpose of making a digital product accessible to everyone.
  3. A clear North Star. At each Sprint, iteratively deliver value and a more trustworthy experience to people with disabilities.

People with disabilities aren’t abstractions! They are real, using our digital products right now (trying to do it at least).

Site do Selo Usabilidade e Acessibilidade

selo.usabilidade.gov.pt

1. We need to act on an action-driven inclusion mindset to enable a significant portion of the 600.000 people in PT with disabilities to be digitally included.

2. Improving the product experience for people with disabilities is a right, a business advantage, and an improvement for everyone’s product experience.

3. Accessibility by design is something that leaders, managers, product and business stakeholders, UXers, and user researchers should strive for and do something about it. The need to redesign, change and adapt is costly and difficult to scale.

Testing with real users with disabilities is irreplaceable. This implies that:

  1. There are no automatic accessibility evaluation tools that will mimic the real pain points and needs.
  2. Get a user researcher to join the product team so that insights and learnings from user testing are seamless feed into the backlog.
  3. Feedback from people with disabilities keep the focus on cadence and impact, allowing fast and risk-free decisions.
  4. When we feel and see that every day we are doing the right thing for people, team and individual accountability are organic.

Learned a lot about the needs of people with disabilities. Having endured this 1st hand, 1st time was mind-blowing.