ANZ
Accessibility Programme

Problem

ANZ touches the lives of almost every New Zealander. With this scale comes responsibility. This is why Inclusion, diversity, and accessibility are essential ingredients in their digital products.

Accessibility impacts people around us every day. Permanent, temporary, or situational disability will affect us all at some stage in our lives. As ANZ head towards a more inclusive future they want to ensure that all users are able to use their products regardless of their access needs.

Every decision made when designing and building products has the potential to impact people’s lives in meaningful ways. It’s essential that the impact of accessible choices is considered, and the right tools, training, and resources are available.

By having accessible digital products and services ANZ aim to build better products that allow people to thrive, are compliant, and uphold brand values. Their goal was to have a clear and consistent approach to bringing accessibility into everything they do.

Approach

To achieve this goal, I worked with an accessibility advisor in my team to develop an approach which could be socialised, prioritised, funded, and actioned.

As a first step on this journey we sent out a survey to understand the level of awareness of accessibility from ANZ’s staff. We had fantastic engagement from teams with 248 responses to the survey. There was a high level of interest in what we’re doing and how we can improve our approach to accessibility.

Our key findings were that ANZ needed to work on developing accessibility resources, get better at training teams, and sharing the knowledge we already had.

These insights informed a plan to address team needs and priorities. These areas included:

  • Awareness & understanding

  • Training & support

  • Tools to improve delivery

  • Processes to align and empower teams

  • Resources & information

Solution

We engaged with key stakeholders across the business to develop relationships and create accessibility champions who could work with us to shape the direction of our approach. This included representatives from Engineering, Product, Marketing, Design, Commercial, and Research.

Forums were set up to connect and share actions being taken and allowed us to create efficiencies and alignment. These conversations informed team needs and challenges and allowed us to prioritise foundational requirements. An example of this was ensuring that Engineering teams had the right tools available to automate their testing. We partnered with Deque to use the axe suite of tools in a bespoke deployment within ANZ’s secure technology environment. I managed this relationship, negotiated costs, and worked internally to implement the solutions.

Recognising that accessibility is an ongoing consideration, I worked to set up clear processes, forums, and ownership of ANZ’s approach to digital inclusion.

Deliverables

  • Introduction of a quota for research and testing participants who have access needs

  • Partnering with organisations like Blind & Low Vision to ensure we stay connected to communities with access needs

  • Participating in Digital Inclusion working groups with industry professionals

  • Proof of concept exploring the use of measurement, reporting, and testing tools

  • Development of a single source of truth for accessibility at ANZ with comprehensive online resources and information

  • Working directly with staff to provide awareness, education, guidance, and support

  • Conducting annual accessibility surveys to measure progress towards accessibility goals

Outcomes

ANZ’s customers now benefit from improved digital product experiences that allow them to achieve their goals regardless of their access needs.

With a roadmap outlining milestones and measures to achieve their accessibility goals, there is a clear and aligned direction for teams to follow. Supporting this plan accessibility champions throughout the business own the delivery of initiatives and evangelise the importance of the work being done.

To ensure momentum is maintained, training, coaching, and guidance is available to teams through 101 courses, and via targeted resources.

Learnings

Understanding where team concerns come from is important. By working with teams to unpick their perception of accessibility, recognise their constraints (time, budget, team focus etc), and build relationships with key stakeholders, we were able to develop an approach that was celebrated instead of resisted.

We learnt early on that by bringing others on the journey with us, and engaging with them through the development of our approach, we were able to improve the quality of our programme, and make accessibility something people were familiar with and excited about in their work.