Finding our way towards more inclusive products
Your discipline leads are on a mission to building a culture of accessibility, helping teams gain the knowledge, confidence and practices they need to make it a natural part of their everyday workflow.
Norway has a population of 5.5 million, and more than one million individuals live with a form of permanent disability. In addition, most of us have temporary difficulties using digital services due to injury or simply being on a busy train with a shopping bag in one hand.
In other words, web accessibility is necessary for some, but good for everyone. That's why discipline leads Bobby Westberg and Marlene Garred have set out to help all of Gjensidige's product teams take accessibility to the next level.
Accessibility is about designing and creating products that are necessary for some, good for all
Creating space for accessibility
The first step on this journey was to gather insights from all product teams in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden to map out how they work with accessibility today. Only 27% said it was already an established practice in their workflow.
– That was way too low a percentage, Marlene says passionately.
An important aspect of her role is to help teams communicate gaps and pain points and to bring those insights to the leadership group (LGDD) so that relevant initiatives are put into action. Accessibility is a strong example of this, as it was clearly a topic that all products teams were struggling with. Therefore, Bobby and Marlene set one short-term and one long-term goal for accessibility at Gjensidige:
- By June 2024, 90% of product teams should have an established practice for accessibility
- In the long term, Gjensidige must build a culture of accessibility, in which it is a natural part of our work process and mindset
How will we reach the goals?
Despite room for improvement according to statistics, Gjensidige is actively strengthening its accessibility initiatives. In February 2024, Marlene and Bobby presented their findings and suggested initiatives to the Leadership group in TI (LGTI) and the Leadership group in Digitalization and Design (LGDD). Together, they reviewed the current regulations and requirements for universal design in the private sector.
This led them to agree on the two suggested initiatives: to engage Inklud, an external company specialising in digital accessibility and to appoint dedicated accessibility individuals in each product team, so that our solutions are compliant by July 2025 when The European Accessibility Act 2025 (EAA) goes into effect.
Inklud's expertise significantly raised awareness of accessibility within the product teams, ultimately resulting in positive changes.
Cue the accessibility champions
To help reach the ambitious short-term goal, each product team now has two dedicated individuals to integrate the principles of accessible design into their products – one for design and one for development. They are called accessibility champions. Of course, it's not the champions' responsibility alone; development managers, product owners and team leads have been informed about the importance of accessibility being as a collective responsibility. The product teams run both manual and automated tests, monitor and improve their solutions continuously.
The next step for Bobby and Marlene is to include Gjensidige's approach to WCAG requirements in the documentation on Storybook with help from Team Builders.
Accessibility Champion
A designer or developer who is responsible for integrating accessibility into their team's product development process.
To reach the goals they have set, Bobby and Marlene have some advice for Gjensidige's product teams:
Firstly, all teams must use components from the design system. That way, everyone can contribute with improvements and fixes for all applications across Gjensidige.
Secondly, there must be an even closer collaboration between UX designers and front-end developers regarding the desired user experience. Their knowledge both overlap and complement each other, which greatly amplifies potential.
This important work will continue to foster even more accessibility experts at Gjensidige.
The experience of using a digital service or product should be positive, regardless of individuals' varying abilities, preferences, and needs