Accessibility and UX

MSU Admissions

origin

Let's open up higher education to as many as possible

Timeline

  1. Developing a Comprehensive WCAG Reporting System

    Played a key role in designing and implementing a WCAG compliance reporting system for the university. This system streamlined the evaluation of digital properties, ensuring that accessibility standards were not only met but actively maintained, fostering a culture of inclusivity across campus platforms.

  2. Opening The Door To Human-Centered Accessibility Practices

    Contributed to the university’s cultural and workflow transformation towards human-centered design. This included spearheading initiatives to ensure that all purchased and internally developed technologies, resources, and solutions adhered to high standards of usability and accessibility, improving the experience for all stakeholders.

  3. Shaping the Spartan Experience Through Accessible Web Design

    Earned the opportunity to influence major university websites central to the Spartan student, faculty, and alumni experience. Leveraged accessibility expertise and design principles to create inclusive, user-friendly digital environments that supported the university’s mission of equity and engagement.
Journey

Prompt

Ensuring an Accessible and Inclusive Redesign of the University’s Admissions Website

The Digital Content and Accessibility Team developed a comprehensive evaluation system designed to measure accessibility and usability. This system strikes a balance between meeting the university's business objectives and addressing the diverse needs of its users, ensuring the admissions website is both inclusive and effective.

Strategy

  1. Implementing a Balanced Barrier Resolution System

    Designed a reporting system that utilized a Likert scale to assess the severity of harm to users and the ease of resolution for the university. This approach prioritized barriers, enabling rapid and comprehensive accessibility improvements.

  2. Collaborative Expertise for Unified Goals

    Leveraged my expertise and empathy to align and amplify the strengths of all team members. Drawing from my success at Wolfram Research, I fostered collaboration to achieve our shared goal of inclusive and accessible design.

  3. Guiding Accessibility with Incremental Progress

    Adopted a step-by-step approach to accessibility, making the process approachable for the university. This method eased the transition to a culture of inclusivity while ensuring progress was both achievable and sustainable.

Challenges

Resistance to Accessibility Remediation

Encountered hesitance from stakeholders regarding accessibility fixes, as many products were already developed and integrating changes post-production posed logistical and resource challenges.

Ensuring Pre-Launch Barrier Resolution

Faced the critical challenge of not only identifying accessibility and inclusive design barriers but also ensuring they were effectively addressed and resolved before the website's launch to avoid continuing usability issues.

Response

Advocating Accessibility as a Universal Benefit

Proactively emphasized the importance of accessibility, framing it as a critical priority ahead of emerging federal mandates. Highlighted how designing products for everyone not only ensures compliance but enhances usability and benefits all users.

As part of the Digital Content and Accessibility Team (DCAT), conducted approximately 50 comprehensive evaluations for the university. Leveraged my expertise to uniquely include detailed, practical solutions for resolving inclusive and universal design barriers, enabling swift and effective remediation.

Moral

Solution

preview of the MSU Admissions homepage
Focus visible, accessible navigation, and play/stop/pause for example in the Admissions homepage
preview of the MSU Admissions apply page
An accessible Michigan State University Admissions page

Growth

preview of the accessible Title 9 Michigan State site I contributed to
MSU Title IX page featuring site title as a heading level 2 and page title as a heading level 1 (a tip we developed for maximum assistive technology navigabilily across a site).

The increasing impact that I had at the university simultaneously afforded me the ability to contribute towards making the Title IX website accessible and that proved fundamental in starting the process of justice for Larry Nassar's 100+ victims.

I refer to this entire project as "the experience" as in the same vein, I worked on a scholarship portal the university was considering purchasing which could have further opened the door to higher education.

Impact

My work at the university earned the opportunity to do extensive and thorough multi-week evaluations, for Fortune 500 clients across industries, at Usability/Accessibility Research and Consulting and then leading latter publications of the like.

I learned how to grow from my experience, earned a job to lead accessibility and UX at a local design firm where I developed my own strategy for inclusivity and universal design and impacted even larger clients.