Portfolio
The Company was evolving rapidly: new eCommerce platforms, a shift to composable architecture, a global design system rollout, and increasing regulatory pressure across markets.
Yet accessibility quality remained inconsistent. Issues accumulated across templates, UI components, and content practices, creating friction not only for users with accessibility needs but for anyone navigating the site under real-world constraints.
Teams were committed to delivering high-quality experiences, but with competing priorities and fragmented ownership, accessibility was often treated as a corrective task: reviewed late, fixed locally, and rarely scaled.
As Senior UX Researcher and accessibility lead, I established a structured, organisation-wide approach that positioned accessibility as a driver of product quality, risk reduction, and user trust rather than a compliance checkbox.
Project context
Challenge
The accessibility challenge was structural, not symptomatic.
Legacy SAP Commerce Cloud pages coexisted with new headless components, creating inconsistent patterns and uneven accessibility quality. The design system lacked WCAG-aligned guidance and governance, and responsibility for accessibility was unclear across design, development, content, and QA.
Teams shipped quickly. Reviews happened late, accessibility debt accumulated, and fixes became increasingly costly.
The core challenge was not identifying accessibility issues, but building the structures, processes, and shared understanding required to prevent them.
Process and method
Strategy
The accessibility program was built on four parallel pillars designed to embed accessibility into everyday decisions rather than post-release correction.
Accessibility Governance and Foundations
I authored and introduced an accessibility roadmap aligned with WCAG 2.2 AA and tailored to the Company’s platforms and component libraries. It defined responsibility boundaries, acceptance criteria, mandatory checkpoints, and escalation paths.
Embedding Accessibility in the Design System
Working with design and engineering leads, I integrated accessibility requirements directly into component specifications, including semantic structure, contrast constraints, keyboard behaviour, error handling, and inclusive copy guidance.
Continuous Audits and Behavioural Validation
I established an audit program combining automated scanning, manual WCAG reviews, and user-centred observation using screen reader workflows.
Cross-Functional Enablement
I supported teams with training and lightweight tooling, including accessibility office hours, pattern libraries with dos and don’ts, sprint-level checklists, and pre-release smoke tests.
Process and method
Execution Highlights
Transforming the Checkout Experience
Checkout was prioritised due to its complexity and revenue sensitivity. I supported the redesign by mapping the screen reader journey, standardising form structures, aligning validation logic, and ensuring dynamic steps were announced and focus-managed.
The most confusing interaction before standardisation was the transition between checkout steps. Users, especially those using screen readers, received no announcement of context change and often did not realise the page had advanced. Resolving this significantly reduced ambiguity and cognitive load for all users.
Component-Level Accessibility Fixes
Several components required systemic intervention, including accordions, tabs, filters, product carousels, and heading structures.
Addressing these issues at the design-system level ensured fixes scaled consistently across global markets rather than being reintroduced through local variations.
Accessibility Monitoring and Dashboards
To support prioritisation, I introduced a structured approach to tracking automated scan trends, issue recurrence, component regressions, and accessibility debt over time.
Recurring regressions in design-system components proved most effective in shifting stakeholder prioritisation. They demonstrated that the cost of inaction multiplied across markets and releases, prompting leadership to prioritise systemic fixes over page-level patches.
Redefining Content Practices
Accessibility extended beyond UI components. I worked with content and marketing teams to evolve alt-text practices, heading usage, link naming, and inclusive copywriting standards.
These changes improved clarity for assistive technologies and reduced cognitive load more broadly, reinforcing that structural clarity, not content reduction, was the primary driver of improved readability.
Result and impact
Outcome
The accessibility program reshaped how the organisation approached digital quality.
Strategic Impact
Accessibility became part of the standard definition of done. Platform migrations launched with stronger foundations, fewer regressions, and a reduced backlog of accessibility debt.
User Impact
Screen reader journeys became more predictable. Form-heavy flows such as checkout, account creation, and repairs showed reduced friction and clearer progression.
Organisational Impact
Design system teams adopted accessibility-first component governance. Development teams integrated checks into CI/CD workflows. Content and marketing teams embedded inclusive writing practices as standard.
The clearest signal of change was the integration of accessibility criteria directly into the design system’s component acceptance process: no new component or update could ship without meeting accessibility requirements.
Accessibility moved from specialist review to shared expectation.
Reflection
Reflection
Accessibility is not a sprint deliverable. It is an organisational capability.
This work demonstrated that sustainable improvement depends on shared ownership, clear standards, early intervention, continuous validation, and a unified source of truth.
It also reinforced a core NN/g principle: accessible design improves usability for everyone.
The foundation established here supports every future platform, every market rollout, and every digital experience the Company will launch.