Accessibility teams with Skyscanner

"Until you have someone in a permanent role, it's really hard to make something stick and to keep the momentum going or to build momentum in the first place...some of the people back then are still in the business now and are now part of the accessibility champions network," Heather Hepburn, Accessibility Lead at Skyscanner, shares the difficulties of implementing an accessibility team.

Heather also shared how her accessibility champions network began, with it starting as a group on Slack, followed by a meetup of roughy 30 people. She commented, "there was no official onboarding process so at the beginning of this year leading up to Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I really felt I wanted to change that."

Heather Hepburn and Walker Walker at IAAP Network and Learn Event

It then moved from an informal meeting to a much more structured model that looks like a hub and a spoke model where they have a central operations pod that manages the network, and four pods around this; engineering, marketing and communications, product makers, and internal staff.

Heather then delved further, "each pod now has a lead who are empowered and are more responsible for making change happen in their particular spaces...There's just going to be so much more action in this model".

Learn from Heather and how she put an onboarding process in place for people in her accessibility champions network: 

This session was part of our October 2022 IAAP Network and Learn event which we partnered with BarrierBreak to host. The sessions are perfect for anyone who is currently an IAAP member or is thinking of becoming one. Find out more information and check back for events being announced in the future.

Find out more about becoming an IAAP member and joining our next ‘Network and Learn’ event at www.abilitynet.org.uk/iaap

Further resources: