Summary
In her talk, Sarah Campari Miller, a design ops professional at Intel, shares her insights on the importance of accessibility and inclusion in design operations. She introduces the Accessibility Flywheel model, which shows how including people with disabilities early in product teams helps catch accessibility issues sooner, reducing costs and legal risks while aligning with corporate missions. Sarah explains how accessible products improve workplace inclusiveness, helping to attract and retain talent with disabilities, thereby creating a reinforcing cycle of improvement. She stresses that design ops practitioners have a responsibility to foster this momentum between better products and better workplaces. Additionally, Sarah recommends Emily Lidow's book 'Demystifying Disability' to equip teams with the language needed to navigate disability topics confidently. Her message underscores that accessibility and inclusion are foundational to the future of design ops and vital for creating more human-centered work environments and products.
Key Insights
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Including people with disabilities early in project teams helps identify accessibility issues sooner, reducing costly fixes later.
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Fixing accessibility bugs during production is exponentially more expensive than addressing them in planning, design, or coding phases.
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More accessible products fulfill corporate missions and help comply with increasing legal accessibility requirements.
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Accessible internal products improve hiring, retention, and recruitment of employees with disabilities, perpetuating a positive feedback loop.
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The Accessibility Flywheel model links inclusive hiring, accessible products, and better workplaces in a continuous momentum.
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Design ops plays a key role in balancing and improving accessibility in both product creation and workplace culture.
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Accessibility and inclusion discussions must move beyond surface-level diversity to core process integration in design ops.
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Learning the appropriate language around disability is essential for prioritizing and designing accessible products effectively.
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Resources like Emily Lidow’s 'Demystifying Disability' are valuable for building comfort and competence in disability discussions.
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Inclusion and accessibility as principles have parallels in other humanist topics such as sustainability, affecting design ops practices broadly.
Notable Quotes
"I am one of the lucky ones. I have not lost my job this year and I get to work on inclusion and accessibility every day."
"Each time that goat sees an accessibility issue, he says Billie T get it. Accessibility."
"Inclusion and accessibility are really core and important to what we do in design ops."
"Fixing an accessibility bug in production is exponentially more expensive than if you catch it during design or planning."
"Making accessible products helps fulfill our corporate mission of improving the life of every person on this planet."
"When you use more accessible products internally, you make it easier to hire and retain people with disabilities."
"Design ops impacts both how we make products and the workplace we create for designers and researchers."
"If you don't have the language to talk about disability, it's really hard to prioritize and design for it."
"I want you to pay close attention to these talks to get the frameworks and language to include these topics."
"This makes our jobs really worthwhile — impacting people's lives both in our products and workplaces."
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