When Once Upon a Farm launched their new website in 2021, it was stunningly beautiful, featuring bright colors, bold images, and fun animated characters for kids. Despite the spectacular site, it quickly became clear to the company that there were challenges around accessibility, and they hired an accessibility consultancy to audit the site. The audit identified nearly 200 issues across various categories, including the need for pause buttons on videos for users with motion sensitivity, larger font sizes and high contrast for those with poor vision, keyboard navigation support for users unable to use a mouse, and more. My challenge involved reviewing these issues, organizing them into structures to track progress, prioritizing, and overseeing the remediation process through development sprints.

This project was run with an agile development methodology. I began by importing all of the issues from the accessibility consultancy into Jira. I used fields in Jira to organize the issues into levels of priority; components, modules, and pages; and issues that required design support before they could be remediated. We worked through 3 week sprints where a team of developers estimated effort during sprint planning, executed tickets, then shared results with the accessibility consultancy. I monitored velocity during each sprint, interfaced with the accessibility consultancy regarding clarifications the team needed, and managed rework when issues weren't completely resolved or caused regressions. I also worked with a designer to ready more visual-related issues for the developers. For instance, it was necessary to adjust the accent colors due to contrast, and the designer was able to help choose new colors that were still on brand but improved readability to acceptable levels.

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This project followed an agile development methodology. I began by importing all the issues from the accessibility consultancy into Jira, using fields to organize them into priority levels, components, modules, and pages, as well as flagging those requiring design support before remediation. We worked in three-week sprints, where a team of developers estimated effort during sprint planning, executed tickets, and shared results with the accessibility consultancy.

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I monitored velocity during each sprint, interfaced with the consultancy regarding clarifications the team needed, and managed rework when issues weren't completely resolved or caused regressions. Additionally, I collaborated with a designer to prepare visual-related issues for the developers. For instance, adjusting the accent colors due to contrast issues required the designer's input to choose new colors that improved readability while remaining on-brand.

After my team's remediation efforts, Once Upon a Farm received their letter of conformance to WCAG 2.1 AA from the accessibility consultancy. Their website maintained the fresh visuals and beautiful functionality from the 2021 redesign but presented it in a more inclusive manner, protecting the company from potential accessibility-related legal issues.

Beyond site remediation, we also improved the culture of accessibility at Once Upon a Farm. Pages and features developed after the remediation process now consider accessibility from the ideation stage, ensuring a more inclusive experience for all users.