Back in mid-May, Capital One’s Lundy Hartshorn wrote a blog post in which they stress the importance of “making digital experiences truly inclusive.” A big part of the company’s goal in achieving such equality is its partnership with Bay Area-based web accessibility startup Evinced.
The company’s founder and chief executive officer, Navin Thadani, has been interviewed several times over the years for this column.
“Picture a customer with low vision firing up their laptop to check their bank balance. Imagine another who has a physical limitation paying a bill online with their tablet. Envision a parent with a baby on their lap reviewing how much they spent on groceries last week, on their desktop with one available hand. Or maybe it’s a customer with a new phone they’re trying to use,” Hartshorn wrote in the post’s lede. “We’re always on the lookout for new ways to make our website and mobile applications usable to all. Digital accessibility is a priority at Capital One and we look to fully integrate it into the products we build. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 are a set of international shared standards that influences the way we build products and it turns out there’s a force multiplier effect that benefits a range of customers.”
Capital One has a video on YouTube about the Evinced collaboration.
In a recent interview conducted over email, Capital One’s senior director of digital accessibility Mark Penicook explained to me accessibility is high priority across every part of the company’s digital presences. More pointedly, accessibility is incorporated “into the entire product development lifecycle” so that Capital One’s websites and apps are usable by everyone. What makes accessibility so important, beyond diversity and inclusion, is it engenders stronger feelings of autonomy and independence and raises self-esteem. As Capital One is best known as a financial services organization, financial empowerment is part and parcel of the accessibility story here. Penicook alluded to accessibility’s status as an evergreen endeavor, its work never truly finished, by saying that while technology is ubiquitous nowadays and certainly can lead to greater productivity, “there is still room for improvement.”
“I’ve made it my mission to generate awareness, connect ideas and encourage building accessibility into the entire process of creating great products and user experiences,” he said.
Penicook extrapolated further, telling me designing well for accessibility is a tricky thing because there are so many considerations. The truth is, accessibility really is a conceptual dynamo, because to Penicook’s point, “it can be extremely complex and nuanced because a disability or combination of disabilities can be situational, temporary or permanent.” Whatever must be accoutered for, however, the work is worthwhile because, quite frankly, disabled people use the internet too.
“Just think about how diverse society is and all the different ways people interact with technology. We live in a world that is neurodiverse and a disability may not be observable—one person may have a form of cognitive impairment, another may have mild dyslexia,” Penicook said of accessibility’s importance. “According to the NIH [National Institutes on Health], about 15% of adults in the United States report some trouble hearing and the CDC reports that 12 million people over the age of 40 are visually impaired. Accessibility helps ensure people aren’t left behind in the use and enjoyment of the ever-expanding digital world.”
He continued: “Accessibility, like the metaphor, is very much a ’rising tide that lifts all boats’ [concept]. One example [is] while not regarded as a disability, the United States Census Bureau estimates nearly 1 in 5 speak a language other than English in their home. We’ve seen that some accessibility features that often benefit those with low vision or dyslexia, can also improve a non-native speaker’s experience. We have to meet people where they are [because], at the end of the day, we are really talking about putting people first.”
Capital One’s aforementioned collaboration with Evinced comes by way of the former’s venture capital arm, the perhaps unoriginally named Capital One Ventures. In an interview with me concurrent to Penicook’s, Nathan Krishnamurthy, a partner at the VC firm, told me the tech industry needs not more accessibility-focused startups. Rather, it needs what he termed “better technology to address accessibility challenges.”
Krishnamurthy pointed to Evinced’s raison d’être as proof of concept. “With a strategic investment from Capital One Ventures, Evinced built a suite of tools that allows Capital One to test for accessibility at scale and shows how technology can be a great leveler,” he said. “Evinced is successful because its technology enables a step change in testing outcomes and efficiency, which both creates real business value and serves to improve accessibility. By helping customers build for accessibility within the software development lifecycle, Evinced becomes a critical platform for shipping software that interacts with humans. It has created a big market, which enables it to have a big social impact.”
Penicook echoed Krishnamurthy’s broader sentiments on the benefits of better accessibility by saying “there’s always a new problem to solve and there are so many variables to consider when it comes to digital accessibility.” He added having a proactive mindset is crucial, telling me “products must be designed and developed from the ground up to be fungible and flexible” in order to reach the broadest possible audience.
“I’ve learned an experience can be fully accessible but still miss the mark on usability,” Penicook said. “Always putting the human first, we want to not only deliver accessible experiences but experiences that are truly delightful. We want to get to a place where users’ preferences, customizations, and innovation can continue to accommodate all of the variables for great personalized experiences.”
Penicook said digital accessibility done well ultimately means equality.
“Digital accessibility helps ensure people aren’t left behind and that our experiences [at Capital One] are equitably available,” he said.
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