Design For All feat. Matt Thomas

In this article, we chat with Matt Thomas, Design and User Experience Manager at Motability Operations. With over a decade at the organisation, Matt shares how he and his team are embedding inclusive design across a range of internal and B2B products, supporting over 800,000 people with limited mobility.

From weekly “Accessibility Surgeries” to department-wide learning, Matt gives a practical look into what it really takes to make accessibility a core part of how a business designs, builds and delivers.

Can you please introduce yourself, what you do, and tell us about your experience?

My name is Matt Thomas, and I’m the Design and User Experience Manager at Motability Operations. We work in the Commercial Operations division. I lead a team which is responsible for design across a range of products, including our B2B commerce platform which sells vehicles to dealerships across the UK, and all the supporting products and services which our colleagues use that help make this happen.

I’ve been at Motability Operations for 11 years. Early on, I worked in internal communications and marketing before moving into design. Reflecting on my career, whether at MO or previous companies, I’ve always been focused on improving experiences, whether with software or physical services. I guess I’m just one of those people who believes there’s always a better way of doing things and I’m keen to explore new ideas.

Motability’s main customers are people with limited mobility or disabilities, and everything we do ultimately aims to improve the experience for them – it’s great to work in a role in such a purpose-driven environment. My team specifically work on products which are used by car dealers in the motor trade, and our colleagues we work with each day. Quite a broad range of users and needs!

How important is inclusion to your work?

It’s really important. We work for a company who help over 800,000 people access independent mobility. As a leader in the design and product space, inclusion must be core to what we do, and part of that is bringing other people on that journey to show them the value of inclusion as well. It’s also simply the right thing to do.

We design for accessibility as a core principle, not just for customers but internally for our colleagues too. It’s about embedding accessibility across the board into how we design and work.

How are you promoting inclusive design through your work? And what challenges have you faced?

I think of it on three levels: individual, team, and departmental.

At the individual level, I expect designers to be comfortable and confident with accessibility. I set that expectation and support them through providing one-on-one coaching, learning through others in the team, and other resources so they can embed that learning within their product teams. I want them to get excited by accessibility, and encourage them to bring interesting new accessibility things they to share with the rest of the team.

At the team level, we hold an “Accessibility Surgery” every week — a dedicated session with specific actions focused on accessibility. This can involve exploring new tools or resources, tackling a particular problem that someone from the product team is facing, or discussions around how to embed accessibility into a new feature or product. We also look at how the designers can work more closely with their colleagues in each of their product teams to help build their knowledge and transfer their accessibility knowledge to other disciplines.

At the departmental level, we share accessibility learnings during town halls and product days, which are days dedicated to working with all the product teams across the department. We’ve also hosted talks about inclusive design at internal tech conferences too, helping spread knowledge across the wider company. It’s really important not to just keep our learnings within the team, but to take those learnings and push them across the whole department and broader organisation.

One of the challenges is that while our team has chosen to go deep into understanding accessibility, other teams and disciplines haven’t always reached the same depth. When we suggest the changes needed to meet accessibility standards, it can sometimes seem like a lot of extra effort if they haven’t already got the knowledge in place. Sometimes that means it takes longer for teams to implement those changes, which might lead to accessibility being perceived as slowing down delivery and make it harder to get teams to make accessibility changes in future.

What two to three tips would you share with other designers trying to design more inclusively?

Again, thinking at those three levels:

· Individual: Dive in and learn all you can. There are so many resources online now that make it easy to learn a lot quickly. Early on in your inclusive design journey, looking for gaps where you can make a difference with small changes is great. Finding smaller, quick wins add up over time, and help you dive in and understand those things further.

· Team: Set up a recurring accessibility meeting like an Accessibility Surgery. There was a point where I just had one designer in my team, and I put it in the calendar at that stage, so we had that time, even if it was just an hour a week, dedicated to accessibility. Now, years on with a bigger team, it’s still in the calendar every week and makes sure we’re always thinking about how to design inclusively, makes sure we’re building knowledge and solving problems. Dedicating time weekly builds momentum and knowledge over time so I’d definitely recommend this.

· Department: Share your wins. If you make accessibility improvements to a feature or product, do a bit of a write-up to show the before and after, what difference it makes, and share these with managers or in broader meetings. People won’t know it’s happening unless you tell them about it, so it’s really important to show people the improvements you’re making to build that attention and understanding of accessibility.

Also, don’t wait to be asked. Start doing, start sharing — even small actions matter.

What resources have you found helpful in developing your understanding of accessibility and inclusion?

· Craig Abbott’s blog — particularly his guidance on the European Accessibility Act given that’s coming into effect so soon.

· Mobile app testing resources — like Andrew Hickory’s guidance on mobile app testing and an accessibility handbook by a Dutch company called Appt.org. Doing accessibility right on mobile can be really tricky, and a lot of issues that come up in our Accessibility Surgeries are on the mobile side of things, so it’s great to have

· Accessibility card deck because everyone loves card decks! This is a visually engaging resource that’s being improved over time, and is really easy to dip into and get to grips with accessibility.

· WCAG in Plain English – This is our new favourite accessible thing to share! Really nicely broken down and easy to understand and consume. It’s made it really easy to collaborate closer with our content and engineering colleagues around accessibility, too!

Anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?

Accessibility is hard and there’s no quick fix. It’s not a case of just getting a list of things you need to do to make a website accessible and implementing them in one go – it’s regular, ongoing work. Even if you build a fancy design system with accessibility built in, that’s just to the level of the components. You still need to do accessibility testing once you put those jigsaw pieces together. A design system like this isn’t a replacement for an accessibility focussed mindset.

It’s a long and enduring commitment, but it’s the right thing to do, and there’s a great community out there to support you. It’s tough, but it’s worth it.

Accessible Design Resources
Following the insightful recommendations from our Design For All participants, we’ve curated an extensive collection of tools, guides, articles, books, blogs, and videos. This resource is specifically designed to support accessibility and inclusion specialists at every stage of their journey.

View Accessible Design Resources