Overview
Making an enterprise product truly accessible
Project Epsilon was a comprehensive accessibility remediation and forward-looking design initiative. Ahead of an enterprise procurement cycle, the product needed to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards — but rather than treating accessibility as a compliance checkbox, we used this moment to embed accessible design practice into how the entire design team worked.
I audited the full product against WCAG criteria, prioritized a remediation backlog with engineering, developed an accessibility annotation system for the design system, and ran training sessions for both designers and engineers on how to build accessibly from the start rather than retrofit later.
The Challenge
Shifting from remediation to prevention
The immediate challenge was fixing hundreds of existing accessibility issues within a compressed timeline. But the more important challenge — and the one with longer-lasting impact — was changing the culture. I worked with the design system team to add accessibility specs to every component, introduced automated accessibility linting into the CI pipeline, and partnered with product management to make accessibility part of the definition of done for new features.
[Process documentation and imagery to be added — WCAG audit findings, remediation priority matrix, before/after component states, annotation system documentation, training materials.]
Outcome
WCAG 2.1 AA conformance achieved and maintained
The product achieved full WCAG 2.1 AA conformance within the project timeline, directly supporting a major enterprise deal. More importantly, the process changes we introduced meant the regression rate for accessibility issues dropped dramatically in the quarters that followed. The accessibility annotation system is now standard practice across all design work.