Enable Canada

1. Introduction

Enable Canada is a disability-led social enterprise dedicated to making the digital world inclusive and accessible. Their mission is to bridge the gap between compliance and genuine inclusion by offering accessibility audits, inclusive design support, remediation services, training, and assistive technology testing.

As the sole designer, I was responsible for shaping the entire user experience and interface design, from research and problem framing to wireframing, prototyping, and final UI delivery.

2. Background

Nearly 8 millions of Canadians with disabilities face challenges accessing digital services, with 29% struggling with basic interactions, 30% facing difficulties using self-service kiosks, and 25% unable to adjust settings or access support controls.

The Enable Talent team identified the need for a unified digital solution that could:

• Help organizations understand and implement digital accessibility standards effectively.
• Enable accessibility experts to provide structured audits, remediation, and inclusive design support.
• Provide organizations with tools to monitor ongoing compliance and accessibility improvements.

3. The Problem

Through early discussions and desk research, several challenges emerged:

• Organizations often view accessibility as a checkbox requirement rather than an ongoing opportunity for inclusive design.
• Many lack the tools, expertise, and capacity to implement meaningful, usable accessibility across their digital assets.
• Public sector and regulated organizations face complex compliance pressures and need robust, hands-on support to reach standards.

Core Design Challenge: How might we design a user-friendly digital platform that simplifies complex accessibility standards and services, empowers organizations to easily understand and implement accessibility best practices, and provides experts with efficient tools to deliver actionable audits, remediation, and ongoing support?

4. The Solution

Enable Canada offers a comprehensive suite of services:

• WCAG 2.1 AA Compliance: Design and audits to meet international accessibility standards.
• Inclusive Design Support: Human-centered design guidance embedded from the start.
• Accessibility Audits & Testing: Combination of automated scans and manual testing, including assistive tech users.
• Remediation & Fixes: Expert-led code-level corrections—ARIA enhancements, keyboard flows, content structure.
• Training & Capacity Building: Workshops and e-learning to help internal teams sustain inclusive practices.
• Assistive Tech Testing & Alternate Formats: Screen reader testing, captioning, PDFs, Braille, etc.
• Ongoing Monitoring & Compliance Tools: Subscription services for dashboards, regression scans, and certification.

5. Design Process

Followed a human-centered design process:

• Empathize – Deeply understood real-world accessibility barriers through secondary research, uncovering the disconnect between technical standards and user-friendly implementation.
• Define – Framed a clear design challenge: transforming complex accessibility compliance into actionable, approachable solutions for non-expert users.
• Ideate – Prioritized designing modular services and clear service journey flows, empowering organizations to select only the accessibility solutions they need.
• Wireframing & Prototyping – Created prototypes that visualized the full service experience, helping stakeholders easily navigate audits, remediation, training, and monitoring without technical overwhelm.
• Test & Refine – Validated the design by testing real-world workflows, iterating based on feedback to make service progress tracking and audit results more transparent and actionable.

6. Impact & Metrics

• Positioning Enable Canada as a trusted bridge between compliance obligations and truly inclusive experiences.
• Tapping into multiple high-impact client segments: government, education, financial services, retail, media, travel.
• Supporting broader national strategies on disability inclusion, such as closing employment gaps under the Disability Inclusion Action Plan leading to 2040
• Helping organizations embed sustainable, policy-integrated accessibility practices, aligning with standards like the newly revised Employment Standard

7. Key Insights & Takeaways

• Accessibility is not just about laws and compliance, it’s a transformation in mindset and businesses benefit from inclusive user experiences.
• Lived disability experience combined with technical acumen delivers not only compliance, but emotional resonance and trust.
• Effective design can simplify complex accessibility requirements, making them approachable for clients and actionable for teams.