Summary
The Cigna Digital Design Operations stood up a new Digital Accessibility and AccessbilityOps team. Digital accessibility as a general term is the inclusive practice of ensuring that digital products (websites, apps, PDFs, etc.) can be used by everyone — including those with a disability or physical impairment — while retaining functionality and usability. Our team ran into many roadblocks including establishing processes, team structure, organizational support, and human resource issues, including onboarding a new team member who was blind. This case study showcases the steps, challenges, and lessons learned standing up a Digital Accessibility Ops team at a Fortune 100 Health Insurance company.
Key Insights
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One in four US adults has a disability, highlighting the critical need for accessible digital experiences.
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Despite diversity accolades, many companies lack basic operational readiness to onboard employees with disabilities.
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Accessibility ops is distinct but complementary to design ops, focusing on embedding accessibility throughout design, development, QA, and vendor management.
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Accessibility should be integrated early in design, not just addressed during QA or retrofitting.
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Increasing digital accessibility lawsuits underscore the legal and business risks of ignoring accessibility.
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Effective accessibility advocacy requires champions within the organization and continuous education to overcome knowledge gaps.
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Using a screen reader to demonstrate inaccessible sites provides a powerful leadership eye-opener.
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Contract clauses mandating vendor accessibility compliance are key to operationalizing accessibility at scale.
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Accessibility teams must simplify complex guidelines like WCAG for broader team understanding and collaboration.
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Incremental improvements in accessibility can yield substantial long-term impact even if full compliance is initially unreachable.
Notable Quotes
"Mike became less excited when he realized onboarding wasn’t as easy for him as it was for sighted peers."
"One digital accessibility lawsuit was filed every hour in 2018, a 177 percent increase from the year before."
"Remember that people are empathetic and may not know what they do not know—it’s our responsibility to educate and move the needle."
"Would you testify in court right now that all your digital properties are accessible? Can you onboard a disabled employee easily?"
"Accessibility ops is really design ops but with a focus on ensuring all tools and processes accommodate accessibility."
"We had to send Mike’s laptop preloaded with all assistive technology to enable timely onboarding."
"We need to distill accessibility guidelines down to layman’s terms to gain business buy-in."
"When starting accessibility ops, accept it will be iterative and you won’t get to 100% accessibility the first time."
"Moving the needle from 50% to 80% accessibility on a feature was a huge win for our team."
"Getting an enterprise mandate and leadership buy-in is crucial for embedding accessibility into your organization."
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