Design with Accessibility First: Integrating WCAG Compliance From the Start

[WhitneyPesek]

In today's digital age, creating accessible learning experiences is not just a best practice, it's a necessity. As Product Designers, we have a responsibility to ensure that our content and user experience is usable by everyone, regardless of their abilities. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by approaching accessibility as a core component from the very beginning of the design process. This means moving ‘accessibility first'thinking as far left in our process and approach, ensuring WCAG compliance and the best possible user experience.

Why Accessibility First?

Integrating accessibility early in the design process offers numerous benefits:

• Enhanced User Experience: Designing for accessibility improves the user experience for everyone, not just those with disabilities. Clear layouts, logical navigation, cognitive load, and color contrast are a few of the things we consider when designing that benefit all learners.
• Proactive Compliance: Addressing accessibility from the start ensures that WCAG guidelines are met throughout the design process, rather than being retrofitted later.
• Inclusivity: Accessibility is a human right. By prioritizing accessibility, we create a more inclusive learning and teaching environment that values each unique individual and ensures equal access to education. 
• Cost-Effectiveness: Fixing accessibility issues later in the development cycle can be time-consuming and expensive. Addressing them early saves resources and prevents costly revisions. This allows us to focus our time and efforts on getting features designed and developed that are most important to our users.

Integrating Accessibility into the Design Process

Here's how we integrate accessibility into each stage of Instructure’s design process:

Accessibility Drivers

• A11y Design Ambassadors: The design team's accessibility ambassadors are passionate about accessibility. They attend internal knowledge training sessions and then share that knowledge with their design pods. This expands the team's understanding of evolving A11y standards and helps advocate for accessibility early and often in the design process.
• Accessibility Engineers: Instructure's Accessibility Engineers are subject matter experts who are vital to our best practices and user experiences. They educate our design ambassadors and are involved from the very start as they conduct design audits. They also conduct engineering accessibility audits as part of the approval process for release readiness of new development.

Analyzing The Problems 

Here are some ways that we integrate accessibility considerations and techniques into our research and discovery processes for the feature spaces that product designers address.

• Identify Target Audience: Instructure Product Designers aim to understand the diverse needs and abilities of our learners and teachers. We consider factors like visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments.
• Review Existing Feature: Designers assess the accessibility of any existing functionalities that are currently used or will be used in the feature to identify potential barriers and plan for remediation.
• Establish Accessibility Standards: Instructure establishes clear accessibility goals that are aligned with organizational policies and WCAG guidelines. This helps the Product Designer, product manager, and engineering manager determine the best approach to deliver the most valuable solution with accessibility as a top priority.

Design Definition

When creating the optimal accessible experience based on research and discovery, designers integrate accessibility into their processes in a number of ways.

• Incorporate Accessibility Early and Often: Instructure's Product Designers collaborate with A11y engineers and ambassadors during the early stages of the design process all the way to development to guarantee that new and existing features are accessible and meet the needs of all users.
• Accessible annotations: We annotate design specs for incorporating accessibility features like sufficient color contrast, screen readers, keyboard only navigation, alternative text fields, and clear heading structures.
• Accessibility Audits: Design reviews catch the majority of accessibility issues. Product designers must conduct an accessibility audit with an accessibility engineer before development handover. We encourage the product manager and a developer to be present during these audits to ensure that all are aligned on the findings and approach moving into development.

Ensuring an Accessible Future

• Research Tools: Instructure is currently documenting and defining best practices for research and user testing to ensure we are using tools and approaches that are accessible to our users.
• Monitor Accessibility Compliance: Instructure regularly assesses the accessibility of our products and continues to  make necessary adjustments to ensure WCAG compliance.
• Track User Feedback: Product Designers and Product Managers continue to gather feedback from learners and use it to improve accessibility over time.
• Stay Updated on WCAG Guidelines: Instructure stays informed on the latest WCAG guidelines and best practices through our accessibility engineers, accessibility ambassadors, and knowledge sharing.
• External Audits: Instructure performs yearly third-party audits to maintain up-to-date knowledge on product compliance and to ensure that Instructure has varying feedback and findings from subject matter experts outside our company.

By placing accessibility at the forefront of our design processes, we can create learning experiences that are inclusive, engaging, and effective for all learners. This "shift left" approach not only ensures WCAG compliance but also fosters a more equitable and accessible educational environment.