Accessibility at Shutterfly

Shutterfly

A legal requirement—and table stakes for good design

2019-2020

The accessibility initiative began in 2019 when we contracted with a consulting firm Bureau of Internet Accessiblity (BOIA) to help us understand where we needed to improve. After understanding the reports, we determined to both retroactively go through the site addressing existing compliance issues and moving forward design everything accessibly.

Sounds great, right? But…how?

It fell on my team to define the whats, hows and whens of compliance. This seemingly small task impacted the entire org – resulting in a new team at Shutterfly specifically tasked with AA compliance.

Role

Director of Product Design

Team

Engineering Partner
Lead Designer

It started with a report that outlined all areas of non-compliance

No one knew how to make the changes happen. I stepped up to lead the initiative.

After a deep-dive into accessible and inclusive design, I started outlining Shutterfly’s next steps.

Two designers began work on the shared UI library, and I began outreach to the rest of the company. Accessibility impacted the UX team, but also required visual changes for the creative and marketing team.

White text on our brand color did not provide enough contrast. I worked with our CMO, CPO and the VP of Creative to identify accessibility fixes.

We updated the style guide and launched a new Sketch library for all designers

I continued to advocate by hosting lunch-and-learns about Accessibility.

Due to my work, Shutterfly created both an accessibility team and a design system team.