Square Enix

Spreading happiness across the globe by providing unforgettable experiences.

My Role: Accessibility Manager

The Team: Me & Digital Platforms (DP)

The challenge: To onboard and upskill a team of directors, designers, developers, project managers, and QA in inclusive and accessible design and development best practices, while also having oversight from Japan, who were not participating in the onboarding or upskilling.

My role & approach: My role was to collaborate with the digital platform team. I achieved this by onboarding Directors across the digital platform group and holding regular meetings to check in on progress and address barriers. I created a roadmap based on my discussions with the team to understand how they worked together from concept to going live. I advocated for incorporating user testing and worked with the Digital Experience Manager to bring in a vendor to support our testing. Because I created this partnership, I was brought in early to provide feedback on initial ideas for new components. I worked with designers to create accessible designs and collaborated with developers to create components that are both accessible and reusable. Additionally, I QAed builds and tested them with various assistive technologies.

The impact: Partnering with Digital Platform (DP) Directors and leads helped bring the teams to the table early in the creative process. This collaboration allowed us to have meaningful conversations that upskilled each team, enabling them to build more accessible components and designs. Through these interactions, the teams began to consider a wider variety of users, including those who were not previously on their radar. My involvement encouraged them to think inclusively from the start, ultimately leading to more innovative and user-friendly solutions. This proactive approach fostered a culture of accessibility and inclusivity within the organization, significantly enhancing the overall user experience.