Summary
Sarah Campari Miller, a design ops professional at Intel's Accessibility Office, emphasizes the critical role of inclusion and accessibility in design operations. She shares the 'accessibility flywheel' model, which illustrates how engaging people with disabilities at every stage of product development—planning, design, coding—helps catch accessibility issues earlier, thereby reducing expensive fixes later. This approach not only improves product accessibility, meeting increasing legal requirements, but also enhances the workplace environment, making it inclusive and easier to attract and retain employees with disabilities. Sarah connects these ideas to the broader Corporate Social Impact organization at Intel, highlighting how accessibility drives business value while fulfilling the corporate mission to improve lives globally. She urges design ops practitioners to deepen their understanding of disability through resources like Emily Lidow’s book 'Demystifying Disability,' promoting the use of proper language and frameworks to better integrate accessibility. Ultimately, she presents design ops as uniquely positioned to strengthen the momentum between accessible products and inclusive workplaces, making the job meaningful and impactful.
Key Insights
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Including people with disabilities in project teams early helps catch accessibility issues sooner and saves time and money.
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Fixing accessibility bugs in production is exponentially more expensive than addressing them during design or coding.
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Accessibility improvements contribute to fulfilling business goals and corporate missions, beyond legal compliance.
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Accessible products used internally improve hiring, retention, and recruitment of employees with disabilities, restarting the accessibility flywheel.
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Design ops plays a crucial role in both product accessibility and creating inclusive workplaces for designers and researchers.
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The accessibility flywheel models how momentum builds between more inclusive teams, better products, and stronger workplaces.
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Accessibility and inclusion should be considered foundational in design ops, not peripheral topics.
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Learning and using appropriate language about disability is essential to prioritize and integrate it effectively into design decisions.
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The Corporate Social Impact Organization at Intel includes a dedicated team focused on disability inclusion, showing organizational commitment.
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Design ops can apply the accessibility flywheel concept not only to disability but also to other inclusion areas and sustainability efforts.
Notable Quotes
"I’m one of the lucky ones. I have not lost my job this year and I get to work on inclusion and accessibility every day."
"Each time that goat sees an accessibility issue, it says Billie T get it. Accessibility."
"We need to go deeper. Inclusion and accessibility are core and important to what we do in design ops."
"Including people throughout the lifecycle helps us save time and money as businesses."
"Fixing an accessibility bug in production is exponentially more expensive than if you catch it during design or coding."
"Making accessible products helps us fulfill our corporate mission to improve the life of every person on this planet."
"Accessible products used internally make it easier to hire, retain, and recruit people with disabilities."
"Design ops is responsible to improve the flywheel—the momentum that balances better workplaces and better products."
"If you don’t have the language to talk about disability, it makes it really hard to prioritize and design for it."
"This talk will help give you frameworks and language to start talking about things you may not have included in your process before."
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