As the European Accessibility Act was coming into force in June 2025, Omniva had procured an accessibility audit for the digital channels. When the audit results started coming in, I took a more active role to shape the mindset in the product organization and plan for action.
The goal
The goal was to achieve:
▪ Full accessibility audit completed and related long term goals set in 2024.
▪ Accessibility in digital channels in accordance to regulatory requirements by 2025.
▪ Accessibility in digital channels in accordance to regulatory requirements by 2025.
The task
At a glance, my role was to analyze the audit results and to make sure my design team was up to the task in helping their teams fix issues and deliver compliant user experiences in the future.
This however is not how accessibility in digital products can be done. Accessibility is not a project, it's a set of processes which requires proper change in thinking.
So I took on the task to thoroughly educate the product organization and took every opportunity to make a point that there is more to gain than compliance by creating inclusive experiences.
The goal was to make core self-service journeys usable regardless of ability, context, device, or assistive technology. For the product teams, the goal was to turn accessibility from a one-off audit response into raising the baseline quality of Omniva’s digital products.
What the audit revealed
Viewed from above, my role was to take in the audit results and to make sure the design team was up to the task in helping product engineers fix issues and deliver compliant user experiences in the future.
The activities
What I did to fulfill the task:
▪ Negotiated budget and organized a training by the auditing agency to enlighten the product teams, especially the engineers.
▪ Drove the cost estimation process with engineers and budgeted future efforts.
▪ Devised a 3 year roadmap and budget for accessibility improvements and foundation building which were approved by the management and board.
▪ Led the process for publishing accessibility statements for all digital channels by regulatory deadline.
▪ Took part actively in a front-end design system workgroup started by engineers.
▪ Presented the roadmap to the management and the board and council to be approved.
▪ Started work on the Omniva Accessibility Standard.
▪ Organized a sharing-learning session for designers around common a11y mistakes inspired my designers to follow up with similar sessions.
▪ Modified our existing design system towards compliancy with WCAG 2.2 AA.
▪ Negotiated budget and organized a training by the auditing agency to enlighten the product teams, especially the engineers.
▪ Drove the cost estimation process with engineers and budgeted future efforts.
▪ Devised a 3 year roadmap and budget for accessibility improvements and foundation building which were approved by the management and board.
▪ Led the process for publishing accessibility statements for all digital channels by regulatory deadline.
▪ Took part actively in a front-end design system workgroup started by engineers.
▪ Presented the roadmap to the management and the board and council to be approved.
▪ Started work on the Omniva Accessibility Standard.
▪ Organized a sharing-learning session for designers around common a11y mistakes inspired my designers to follow up with similar sessions.
▪ Modified our existing design system towards compliancy with WCAG 2.2 AA.
The results
My actions helped us achieve the following results:
▪ Awareness about accessibility was raised significantly amongst designers, engineers and product managers.
▪ We achieved alignment on the reasons for the status quo.
▪ We prioritized the digital products and types of a11y problems in a matrix based on usage numbers and severity of issues, aiming to work on highest impact issues first.
▪ We achieved a clear understanding on what was necessary for becoming compliant.
▪ A roadmap and an execution plan was put in place.
▪ A core group of FE engineers created a design system workgroup and started planning a modern design system.
▪ Accessibility statements on all our digital channels were published by deadline (28 June 2025).
▪ Accessibility testing tools were implemented in the FE deployment pipeline.
▪ Awareness about accessibility was raised significantly amongst designers, engineers and product managers.
▪ We achieved alignment on the reasons for the status quo.
▪ We prioritized the digital products and types of a11y problems in a matrix based on usage numbers and severity of issues, aiming to work on highest impact issues first.
▪ We achieved a clear understanding on what was necessary for becoming compliant.
▪ A roadmap and an execution plan was put in place.
▪ A core group of FE engineers created a design system workgroup and started planning a modern design system.
▪ Accessibility statements on all our digital channels were published by deadline (28 June 2025).
▪ Accessibility testing tools were implemented in the FE deployment pipeline.