Making content at Wise more inclusive
Leading a team of writers, I devised a strategy for improving the inclusivity and accessibility of content at Wise. We worked at a systems level to develop an inclusive writing guide, now part of Wise’s design system.
Understanding the problem
Wise has been growing at a phenomenal pace, and until recently, accessibility was not a core consideration in its product development. This was extremely problematic, considering the numerous barriers people with access needs already face when trying to interact with financial products. In December 2019, the design team launched an initiative to redesign all aspects of the product with accessibility in mind. This initiative spanned a range of projects, and I took the lead on the creation of a new inclusive writing guide.
This guide needed to be clear, easy to follow, and available for everyone writing content at Wise — content designers, product designers, product and marketing managers, customer service agents, and more. It also needed to be practical, and grounded in robust accessibility testing and research. If the final product was difficult to find or put into practice, we knew it wouldn’t be used by anyone.
Process
We began with secondary research on the wide array of accessibility best practices available online — including resources and training from Government Digital Services in the UK, the Nielsen Norman Group, and the Web Accessibility Initiative, among others. While in-person research and testing was delayed with the onset of the COVID-19 lockdown, we relied on this secondary research to get started.
Next, we ran internal card-sorting exercises to determine the information architecture for the guide, and how we should structure the content. We found that we had a lot of content to cover, so this was a valuable step in helping us to make the guide clear and understandable.
Once we finished writing and adapting our first draft of guidelines to Wise, we were in position to run in-person testing and research again. This gave incredibly valuable insights which improved the quality of the guide to no end. We also recorded some of those sessions, and used them later to show workshop attendees the importance of getting accessibility right. After several feedback rounds with internal accessibility experts, we launched the guidelines and added them to our design system.
Knowing that this new guide would have no effect without the internal promotion and encouragement, we ran several workshops with relevant teams across the company. In these sessions, we introduced writers to the new guidelines, helped them apply the rules to their work through examples, and showed them that this resource is practical and easy to use.
Outcome
While the accessibility initiative is ongoing, and these changes can be slow to take effect, many of the people writing for Wise have started using the guidelines to inform their content. We noticed a positive impact right away, and developed a strategy to improve the guidelines constantly over time.