E-Learning Website Redesign
How can we enhance employees' e-learning experience in Digital Accessibility at CIBC?
Case Study
The Enterprise Digital Accessibility is an e-learning intranet with accessibility standards, checklists & trainings for all employees at CIBC in supporting their needs while developing and designing digital interfaces for clients with disabilities.
As the e-learning website moved to a new platform i.e MS SharePoint, testing it for usability and accessibility based on user research was the step to be taken before it's official launch on May 18th - Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
Our Approach
As a UX Researcher and Designer, my role encompassed analyzing user insights, identifying pain points, and recommending design solutions. I collaborated closely with the teams from Communications, Digital Accessibility, and UX Design to ensure that the final product aligned with best practices and met the diverse needs of users with disabilities.
My Role
As a UX Researcher & Designer in analyzing user insights, making design recommendations, collaborating ideas and best practices with teams from the Communications, Digital Accessibility and UX Design teams.
Tools
Platform
Keywords
Timeline
Jan'23 - April'23
MS SharePoint
Figma
Desktop
Laptop
Heuristics Evaluation. Digital Accessibility. Usability Tests. Affinity mapping. Assistive Technologies. Brainstorming. Information Architecture. NVDA screen reader, ZoomText, magnification
Understanding business goals
01
Make CIBC successful in creating digitally accessible services for clients with disabilities and align the standards throughout the organization
02
Aim to promote & simplify e-learning experiences on new platform for existing and new users
Identifying the
problem space
Users had diverse levels of knowledge on accessibility. Their needs involved having a simple and self-paced e-learning portal that supported their learning and encouraging in implements accessibility best practices at CIBC. The organization wanted to solve this problem through e-learning courses, lunch & learn workshops & consultations while also addressing their current pain point with the existing system.
Creating a Roadmap
Usability Tests
Design Heuristics
Affinity maps
User stories
Redesign IA
​
Framework: prototype &
co-design solution
Create framework of accessible & usable components
​
Accessibility Audit
Test Framework & Solution
Usability testing
Agile : 1-week sprint
Learning about
the user
User group
CIBC employees with all abilities who are Web Developers, UX/UI Designers , QA or Content by profession
​
User seeking information on Accessibility best practices
User Research
Research Goals
To understand users' navigational behaviors, informational needs & familiarity in terms used
Research Questions
-
Does the user's mental model match the existing Information architecture i.e. navigation?
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Can the user scan the information with ease?
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Can users understand terminologies used?
Design Priniciples
Designing for inclusion begins with recognizing exclusion
Our overarching goals throughout our re-design was to ensure we cater to disabilities like Visual, Hearing, Cognitive, Neuro-diverse by ensuring information is easy to consume, without metaphors, non-capitalized and left-aligned text, videos with captions etc. Hence, we tested the re-designed components with users with different abilities & assistive technologies like NVDA, ZoomText & magnification
Prioritization of
Ideas
Based on high user impact that included the customer value & the reach, the team /organization agreed to focus on:
​
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Global navigation
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Content hierarchy on pages
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Add role-specific pages
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Provide quick access and purpose on the landing page
Role-specific resources
Re-organizing laws & CIBC Standards
Quick access from homepage
Content hierarchy
Navigation links behavior in pages
Finding the Solutions for the pain points
Global Navigation
User Story
As a Project Manager, I want to understand the laws & regulations in terms of accessibility so that I can keep myself informed when addressing the team
Pain Points
-
Mismatch in the users's mental model with the navigation across pages.
-
More than 4 clicks to perform a task with unsuccessful completion of tasks.
Solution Outcome
Differentiating 'Laws & Standards' from Accessibility education. Hence serving users with topic-specific learning styles.
Visual Layout
User Story
As a consultant with a client-facing role, I want to learn how to make emails and pdfs accessible so that I can respond to client emails following the CIBC Standards.
Pain Points
-
Users preferred a purpose and easy access from the homepage.
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It took more than 2 minutes to understand & navigate from the homepage. ​
Solution Outcome
Providing accessible and screen reader friendly
(descriptive links), & providing the required information to the users.
Role-specific Resources
User Story
As a Developer, I want a checklist for accessibility in designing components at one place & access the checklist whenever I want, so that I am sure of implemented the accessibility standards.
Pain Points​
-
Not all users had. familiarity with terminologies used eg. Foundations & Components
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They wanted. a checklist based on their roles
Solution Outcome
Easy navigation to access checklists and bookmarking resources, hence saving time for future references
Content Hierarchy
User Story
As a content writer who is neurodiverse, I want to able to read information which is simple and easy to scan, so that I can apply the best practices while writing accessible content for CIBC banking applications.
Pain Points​
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Contents of the webpage were not screen reader friendly
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Scanning the page for information was time-consuming, needed clear differentiation between headings and text​
Solution Outcome
Accessible content with heading links for quick access to the user's role specific section
Recurring rate of usage
Net Promoter Score
Acquisition rate &
User retention
Time Spent on completion of tasks
Using the success criteria
For Quantitative data: Adobe analytics, & for Outreach and knowledge sharing : Internal communications platform (i.e. Workplace)
After the official launch of the site date on May 18th, 2023, We can measure the solution's success metrics by the following
Learnings and Key takeaways
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Co-designing with users and testing our concept solutions with users with different abilities helped us make decisions. However, the need still exists for testing with people from more spectrums and intersectionality that would project unique interactions and user journey.
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Onboarding for new hires in teams could provide more insightful measures in user acquisition as a future scope. ( Users tested with had worked at CIBC for more than 4 years)
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Myth: Microsoft SharePoint is accessible. All the components are to be tested against all assistive technologies ( like ZoomText, Immersive reader, NVDA, JAWS) to make design solutions as diverse solutions are expected from various tools