Accessibility by Design, not Audit
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My entry into the Made Simpler family was unique. I originally met the team as a test participant: I’m a screen reader user and Made Simpler were user testing one of their prototypes. After the testing was complete, we ended up staying on the line chatting. I shared my experience as an accessibility consultant, and my work in the health sector and we talked dogs and coffee. Mostly dogs.
An hour later, they offered me a job! The mission was to bring ‘accessible by design’ to life.
My first project with the team was as accessibility consultant on the redesign of Australia’s National Health Service Directory. A service used by millions of Australians each year. A project lead by healthdirect and funded by the Department of Health and Aged Care. We were given a blank canvas brief to redesign the directory and roll in the Covid vaccine finder.
This was an opportunity to do things the right way from day one. My role involved working sprint by sprint with design and development to identify and solve accessibility needs before they get baked in, advocating for an accessibility standard, sharing my experience as a native screen reader user and building empathy for those with accessibility needs.
This "Accessibility by Design" approach was a refreshing change to “accessibility by audit”. We’ve all experienced “accessibility by audit”, where at the end of the development process a WCAG auditor logs all the issues found, now baked into code, and they get promptly pushed to the post-live-maybe-never backlog.
Accessibility by Design is our way forward. Today, I work across all of the projects Made Simpler delivers, reviewing design with our UX and design team and working with our client’s development teams as accessible design components get turned into accessible HTML.
What I have found truly motivating is the adaptability and shared passion for accessibility within the teams we work with. I witness people from diverse backgrounds coming together, supporting each other in learning—steadily increasing their accessibility knowledge. The mindset has never been "we can't do this," but rather "here are the challenges, here's what we know, and here are our knowledge gaps; how do we make this work?"
“Accessibility in health, and in any service, is not just a checkbox; it’s fundamental to good design.”
Users of our digital health services are all likely to be working with permanent, temporary or situational accessibility needs.
If you're looking to create health products that are truly inclusive and want to work with a team who shares this vision, reach out to us.