Integrating Inclusivity and Empathy Into the Webex Platform

Accessibility has been a hot topic for years, as enterprises around the world strive to meet WCAG standards. However, too often, accessibility becomes a legal checklist; most companies focus on compliance, not value creation, when it comes to persons with disabilities (PWD). They miss the biggest value driver: serving PWD as customers. Webex understands this. That’s why it had a hard focus on empathetic, inclusive design as it began to improve its world-renowned Webex platform.

Watch Webex’s Willette Harris, Engineering Product Manager, for a detailed walk through of the Webex redesign effort that has empathy at its core. Willette covers the overall intent of the Webex improvement efforts, the internal process of starting the project, how it began engagement with Applause on this project and details of the collaboration between the partners. 

Want to learn more specifics about Webex accessibility features? Visit this Webex page.

Interested in more on the topic of accessibility? Watch the first webinar in this series - Accessibility Now Means Less Pain Later.

If you have any questions about the content in any webinar, please email [email protected]

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

• How Webex leveraged many baseline studies around a PWD persona to get started
  
• Inclusive design workshops with a person with blindness, and how these impacted the SDLC
  
• The collaboration with Applause for in-sprint testing, audits, consulting and education
  
• How the company shifted left to begin inclusive design principles which greatly impacted the design and engineering processes
  

Speakers

Willette Harris

• Engineering Product Manager • Webex

Willette Harris is an Engineering Product Manager for Webex and a New Orleans native based in Seattle. Her primary responsibility at Webex is to champion accessibility through innovation in the product and to help build an inclusive culture throughout the organization. She firmly believes that accessibility cannot exist just in the products we develop, but must be woven into the culture of the organization building the product. Willette has been leading the accessibility effort at Webex for the last 18 months.

Tom Bonos

• Chief Revenue Officer & Operations Officer • Applause

Tom is responsible for driving the vision and execution of the global sales strategy, and leading the company’s revenue generation and customer operations teams. Tom came to Applause with 15+ years of sales leadership. He served as the Executive Vice President of Sales for ServiceSource. Prior to ServiceSource, Tom was a Group Vice President at Oracle, responsible for leading its North American Applications Value Programs. Tom graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in Economics and Geological Sciences. He lives in Florida with his wife and children.

Applause is the worldwide leader in crowdsourced digital quality testing. With testers available on-demand around the globe, Applause provides brands with a full suite of testing and feedback capabilities. This approach drastically improves testing coverage, eliminates the limitations of offshoring and traditional QA labs, and speeds up time-to-market.