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Summary
A lot of folks talk about accessibility and inclusive design, but have no clue how to bring it into product development practice. Join us for a conversation about different approaches to building operational support for inclusive design and accessibility practices. Panelists include Elliott Polette and Attiyya Akinwole from The Home Depot, Kalee Dankner and John Davenport from LinkedIn, and Mara Sohn who led on Pinterest’s accessibility efforts. Saara Kamppari-Miller, Inclusive DesignOps Program Manager at Intel, will host this panel.
Key Insights
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Inclusive design is a continuous process that starts by identifying exclusion and solving for edge cases before scaling to many users.
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Leadership support is critical to secure resources and make accessibility a top priority within organizations.
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Design Ops teams enable accessibility by increasing visibility, accountability, and facilitating cross-functional communication.
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Peer review programs improve design quality by educating designers on accessibility and catching issues early.
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Tools like Figma plugins and accessible design system components help designers but cannot replace proper training and culture.
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Grassroots and scrappy initiatives, such as empathy-building events and hackathons, can kickstart accessibility programs without initial funding.
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Executive sponsorship often comes from collaborating with diversity and inclusion teams and highlighting business risk related to accessibility.
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Accessibility ownership should be shared collaboratively across design, engineering, product, legal, and leadership.
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Accessibility efforts benefit enormously from elevating authentic voices from disabled users and communities.
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Emerging areas like haptics and tactile technology could be the next frontier for inclusive product development.
Notable Quotes
"By designing products through the lens of edge cases like disabilities first, they can often become better products for everyone."
"Accessibility is not just a checklist item that needs to be checked before something ships, it’s a methodology embedded from the start."
"One of the superpowers of Ops humans is that we’re really good at taking problems and gaps and making them visible."
"You can’t just throw another tool at accessibility problems; training and culture are just as important."
"Meeting designers where they spend their time and integrating accessibility into their tools is the most effective way to drive adoption."
"It’s very overwhelming for one person to own accessibility alone; you have to build a coalition of passionate allies."
"Nothing about us without us is the mantra we are embracing when doing our inclusive design operations."
"Design, product, engineering, legal, and leadership all need to be involved; it should never be just one group’s responsibility."
"Starting with a small project builds momentum and shows results that help get funding and organizational buy-in."
"If you start now with small tweaks and passion, you will gain ground and rally people behind you quickly."
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