Cisco Systems

Employee Initiative: Enhancing products through accessibility

When Cisco's product line evolved from the wiring closet to the desktop, Patty Mertz Medberry recognised a challenge.

"Before, our equipment had been used exclusively by engineers, but when we introduced the IP phones, for example, the number of users exponentially," she explains. "We now had millions of people, of all different levels of ability, using our equipment."

But how well Cisco products addressed the needs of people with disabilities wasn't clear. It was a question that hadn't been asked, and that was an eye-opening realisation - one Mertz Medberry and her colleague Don Pitchford felt needed to be addressed.

Mertz Medberry and Pitchford quickly set up accessibility training and evaluation, and shortly thereafter helped establish a set of design specifications with the help of industry experts outside Cisco. Partnerships with companies such as IP Blue have helped make Cisco IP phones accessible to people with vision challenges, and other products, like Cisco Unity software, have been modified to function with TTY technology to support users who have problems hearing or speaking.

Cisco's addressable market requiring accessible products was approximately $3 billion in FY2005, half of which was the federal government. The federal government is required to purchase accessible products under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

"We realised that designing for accessibility actually improves the product for all users," Mertz Medberry says. "And that makes good business sense."

Today the Accessibility Initiative has been extended to more than 15 business units and innumerable programs. For example, Cisco established the Accessibility Academy to teach employees how to design accessible products, and teams redesigned both Cisco.com and the company's intranet with accessibility in mind.[i]

Accessibility

Cisco design their offices, labs, systems, websites and products, with help from their Accessibility Initiative to ensure that all employees and customers with disabilities are catered for. They work with several disability organisations such as Employers' Forum on Disability, the National Business Disabilities Council and HIRED. They also participated in the American Association of People with Disabilities' National Disability Mentoring Day, teaching students and veterans with disabilities about information technology career opportunities.

Cisco Systems have undertaken an accessibility program. They aim to increase accessibility of their products whilst also training employees to design and market their products and websites with this in mind, whilst also evaluating these issues throughout the design process, also using people with disabilities in these stages to ensure good accessibility. They also aim to support Cisco Customers and employees in addressing accessibility issues related to products and the workplace and contribute to industry guidelines for accessibility. Subsequently in 2004 Cisco launched their Accessibility initiative, this was overseen by a cross-functional group and the Voice Technology Group, one of Cisco's largest technology groups.

Cisco's website has undergone a revamp in order to become more accessible to those with disabilities in 18 months they managed to turn 150,000 web pages into the new accessible format, ensuring people with disabilities are given the same level of accessibility to their products and customer services as everyone else.

In 2003 Cisco implemented a system in the Washington school for the deaf, to allow users to make and receive calls and receive voice messages over their computer, where the speech was converted to text. This program saved many wasted hours, and took away the need for deaf people to have assistance when using the phone, greatly increasing levels of communication.

Training has been given to all their staff, and online training for accessibility awareness, which they have called the Accessibility Academy.

In March 2005, they completed the construction of their Accessibility Testing Lab and Evaluation studio. This provides all the technology to test their website and product accessibility and how their products can be used with further assistive technology. The lab also features full audio and video recording so that the team there can observe focus groups and gain a better understanding of how their products are used by disabled people and therefore gain knowledge on how to improve their services.

Cisco have since then planned to expand all of their facilities and procedures for testing for accessibility and their Accessibility Initiative has been extended to nine key Business units, now offering role-specific training in accessibility-related roles with the business units.

Read an article on Cisco's website about Cisco and Accessibility