Enhancing Products Through Accessibility
When Cisco's product line evolved from the wiring closet to the desktop, Patty Mertz Medberry recognized a challenge.
"Before, our equipment had been used exclusively by engineers, but when we introduced the IP phones, for example, the number of users increased 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 realization— one Mertz Medberry and her colleague Don Pitchford felt needed to be addressed.
Mertz Medberry will admit to being a little surprised at how receptive senior executives were to her proposal that Cisco examine the accessibility of all of its products and services—after all, what she and Pitchford were proposing was an enormous undertaking.
But the team quickly found enthusiastic executive support. "I think it was only a matter of days before we had the go ahead, the funds, and the human resources we needed."
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 realized 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.
