Accessibility by design

In this episode, FinTech expert Jas Shah shares his journey and why digital accessibility is no longer optional. He breaks down how the industry has moved beyond basic colour tweaks to fully inclusive design, guided by standards like the WCAG. Jas calls out the common myths and confusion around accessibility, and makes a clear case for why it’s good for business—not just compliance. From user testing to practical fixes, he lays out how FinTechs can build products that work for everyone—and why that’s a smart competitive move.

Transcript

Prerna

Jas, welcome to the accessible finance podcast, where we delve into the vital intersection of FinTech and disability inclusion. Today, I'm thrilled to have Jas Shah with us. Jas is a FinTech veteran with over 16 years of experience working across both large financial institutions and dynamic startups. He's been instrumental in developing and scaling FinTech products on a global scale, and today we are diving into a topic that's often overlooked but absolutely critical, digital accessibility in FinTech. Jas, It's an honor to have you on this episode.

Jas

It's great to be here. Thank you, and thanks for the glowing introduction. Veteran definitely makes me sound older than I am.

Prerna

So to kick things off, could you share with our listeners a bit about your journey in FinTech. How did you get started and what brought you to where you are at today?

Jas

Sure. I mean, you've called me a veteran, so it's a long road to where I am today. So I started off as an engineer. I call myself a reformed engineer because it's a very, very short time. Did a computer science degree, and then straight away, started working in the city for a pension fund manager, working on their trading desk, developing little rapid applications, we used to call them, which were just little tools stitched together with a bit of code to give traders better view of what their portfolio looks like. You know, where payments are going, etc. And after a while, I realized that writing code every day wasn't really my passion, it was more understanding the challenges that stakeholders were facing. So I moved to City Bank very shortly after, where I started my product journey, I'd say, working as an analyst on a data product, and then moving into various teams within the business, helping build fixed income monitoring tools, different trading platforms. And over the course of around five or six years, really learning a great depth and breadth of what different financial services products did, why they were needed, and what those challenges for the different internal stakeholders were very similar. After about six years, I moved to Schroders, very similar experience there of big financial services organization working on a very specific product within that organization and helping improve it, working with the end users to actually develop the platform. Same again, out of fidelity. Couple of years after that, and then in around 2017 I decided to go solo to had a few people, a few friends of mine, working in FinTech, and I decided to kind of leave the traditional finance experience and help them build products. And since then, I've been helping fintechs build products. Fintechs and financial services organizations build products, shaping product development, defining digital product strategy, speeding up time to market, scaling products across the FinTech landscape, sometimes as an advisor, but mostly my preference is as a hands on consultant, amazing.

Prerna

I think we share a little bit of commonality there. I'm a reformed engineer as well. And, you know, being an engineer, it allows me to think through things quite logically, but I actually want to solve problems in a slightly different role than an engineer. You have had an impressive career, as you mentioned, you've worked in fintechs, large and small. What kind of projects have you been involved in where digital accessibility was a focus, and how have you seen approach to accessibility change and evolve over the years?

Jas

I'm not gonna lie, most of the products I worked on, especially in that first 12-13, years of my career, there was no consideration of accessibility. There was a baseline understanding of colors that don't go together, because, you know, when you're executing trades at speed, for example, which was where I was working my early part of career, working at City Bank and making sure that the images and text and numbers were very clear. There was a consideration of look. You can't have vibrant red on black, very jarring. You're using greens in a specific way. Is important. But that was about it. Was color contrast, but it was only in the recent two or three years I've been looking into actually creating more accessible products using different frameworks, looking at Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and really making sure that products are built in a way from the ground up to be inclusive across the board. So the journey's kind of been not really knowing anything about it. And again, I did a computer science degree. There's no look accessibility module as part of my degree. It's, here's how you built this. Here's Java framework principles, here's mathematics for computer science. So you have those baseline things, but unless you kind of experience. Sit and all exposed to it in a certain way. You never go down that exploration journey. And it was only a few years ago where I was speaking to some folks, and I started reading up about a bit more and really trying to build that into everything I helped build going forwards.

Prerna

Brilliant. So what you're saying is you have to start thinking about accessibility, not necessarily as an add on, but it's a design principle of how you build a product. So what advice would you give those who are thinking about this? So what kind of things they should be thinking about in terms of what are those design principles? How should they start the journey so that it's not an afterthought, but almost fundamental to how a product is being built. 

Jas

Probably a bit biased, because this is how I kind of got into it. But read the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It's like the go to Bible of where to start from what I've seen. I don't think there's anything that the matches are, anything anyone I speak to, designers, UX people who specifically in this space, that's the first thing. They say, go read that, then come back and they really look to apply those principles into whatever product you're building, or trying to modify your existing product to fit those design principles. I think any more than that is starting to get deep down the rabbit hole. But I think the first port of call is to read that ensure everyone across your team understands it, not just product people and design people probably have more of an understanding of this, but also engineers, also people doing demos actually, maybe interacting with users face to face. So read that first understand how it affects your product or potential future product, and then try and think of ways to ensure you're adhering to those guidelines. That

Prerna

makes sense. How hard is it for people to kind of go on this journey? Because it sounds simple, but probably it's not.

Jas

Yeah, it's hard. Again, I can only speak from my own perspective of going through this journey. And the first thing that I found was, obviously, as I mentioned, the first, you know, 1213, years of my career was just a complete lack of awareness, a lack of awareness of the principles, the guidelines, how to approach it, how to fit that into a product that I'm building or helping build, or that already exists that I'm helping scale. So awareness is point number one, awareness of the guidelines, awareness of a large set of potential customers who need more accessible products. And that's that's point number one. Again, it's a point that, literally, this pod that we're speaking on helps to address, because the more people speak about it, the more people raise specific points around accessibility and in digital products, the more people start to become aware, and then start to do more research. So awareness is is point of one. Then I think there's a perceived complexity on adherence and making products accessible. I think one thing that is alleviating that a little bit is AI, to be honest, it's now quite easy to look at a landing page or a website, for example, and say, Here's my website or here's my landing page, here's the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the latest standards, read the guidelines and basically do an audit of my site or my landing page, or my product, and tell me what I should do, first, second, third, you know, red, amber, green. What are the important things I need to do? What are the nice tabs, what things I could have to improve it? So I think that kind of removes some of the complexity, but I think that there is still a perceived complexity issue. Then I think the last thing is getting started on the journey is start testing your product with more diverse users. Again, I've been guilty of this in the past, where I'm testing a product with people into internally at City Bank shows and whatever. I was testing a product with people that I got on with or I knew, so I just go to them straight off the bat, that'd be my first book call, and not really going beyond those guardrails that I put up for myself, just really looking outside the box and understanding that people have different needs, like visual interactive like haptic feedback, all of that kind of stuff. You have to get a more diverse group to test your product, to understand whether it's good or not, whether it's accessible or not. Those are three things. Those are the three challenges, and a couple of ways that you can overcome those challenges

Prerna

That's really helpful, especially the last point, we underestimate the importance of that diversity of customer group, because at the end of the day, the customer group is going to be more diverse than what we are testing with. So I think that's that's really, really important. One of the things that helps organisations, especially in financial services, is regulation. We know there is Americans with Disabilities Act, and we have European Accessibility Act, which is. Coming into force. What do you know about European Accessibility Act? Why do you think it's important, and how do you think it will impact the industry in Europe, and what should they be thinking about it?

Jas

 I did a very deep dive on this last year, European Accessibility Act. But as you mentioned, it's coming into force in June. I think June 28 is a big step forward in terms of regulation, like in terms of its impact to financial services. It covers banking apps, ATMs, payment terminals, and it's ensuring that they must be accessible to all users. So it means that FinTech companies in Europe will have to ensure all digital interfaces meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines standards. So that's WCAG. Think it's 2.1 is the is the minimum standard provide alternative access methods if they don't meet those standards, and then ensure clear and understandable financial information. The whole point of the regulation is to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to a wide range of everyday products and services, not just in banking and financial services, but across a wide range of products. And I think the reason they've influenced this regulation is there's 87 million across Europe, which is one in five Europeans who have disabilities, whether that's older people with hearing impairments, permanent hearing impairments, or folks with temporary impairments all the way to like people have permanent disabilities. It's important because, as we've seen in financial services and fintech across across the landscape, regulation is usually the big regulation with market market innovation is usually the big driver of change. If we look at I always go back to PSD one, which is kind of the trigger for the this digital banking era. You look at PSD two, and look at what that's done with open banking across Europe and the UK and across the globe. Really, it's another regulation by from the EU, which I think is going to start changing the way people think about building financial services products, not not super drastically, but hopefully changing the way they build from a foundational level. One of the compounded questions you've you've heard there was, what does it mean for financial institutions? I think we're already seeing the impact of the regulation. I think towards the back end of last year we saw Monzo announced a strategic partnership with sign live, so they're basically putting British Sign Language tech as part of their customer services framework so that people who only communicate via BSL can understand and communicate more effectively. Bunk I think did something very similar. Case your bank in Spain, have a similar sort of partnership in terms of pushing the accessibility agenda for their customers. So I think we're already seeing changes, and that's usually what happens. You'll see a regulation a year down the line, and people will start to change the way they're building things, incorporate other things into their product, and try to make sure they're ahead of the regulation, and I think, to be honest, we'll see more of that over the next few months. Is what I said at the end of last year. This is Monzo bunk and Keisha. This is just the start. More will do it because, yes, they have to, if they want to access this broad market across the EU but also because it makes sense to do it just from an economical point of view, 87 million people, as I mentioned, one in five Europeans. That's a big market, and it sounds kind of weird to talk about economics and commercials when you're talking about accessibility, but it's both really banks and fintechs aren't going to spend loads of money creating products for a group where there's no commercial incentive. It sounds icky, but that's the reality of it. But I think they see both. They see, look, there's a big market, and we can make sure access to financial services is across the board and it is equal. It's not just for people who who aren't impaired in some way. 

Prerna

That makes perfect sense. So regulation is an interesting space. Sometimes regulation is only good for creating that stick, but actually, regulations like this actually can also create the right kind of conditions for innovation. I really liked your comparison with PSD one and PSD two. I really hope it's exactly that where it creates the next wave of innovation and revolution in financial services. As you said, there's a big market. There's a lot of value being left on the table. Let's assume people understand the value, importance, commercial impact of implementing accessibility features. How do they measure success? What are the KPIs, or what mechanisms people should use to see whether they have done enough to actually capture not only that value, but make their products more inclusive? 

Jas

The first thing in terms of, I wouldn't say, a KPI. AI per se, but I'd say the first thing to do to get the baseline is to do some sort of accessibility audit. There are tools that that help. I think there's some SEO tools and some product metric tools, like Mixpanel aptitude, that help do these accessibility audits. But then the best thing to do is, again, look at the WCAG guidelines, look at your product and just create a report which rag status is, all of those accessibility guidelines against your product or your product against those guidelines? Where are you doing? Well, where are you doing really poorly. Where are you okay, that's the first port of call. I would say to baseline. Look, what are we doing here? Well, where's our product adhering where is it not? In terms of actual KPIs, in terms of in live customers using your product, seeing how, how inclusive and accessible the product is, I'd say for the most part, the mechanisms should remain the same so things like feedback forms, the standard is like, you have a support query and you contact Customer Services and there's a post CS survey. Those mechanisms are fine as they are, but the content in those forms, in the surveys need to be modified, because really, I don't know about any surveys you've done. The 99% of the surveys I've done don't take into account any impairment that I may or may not have. So it's Oh, how did you find the experience out of five was your problem resolved within a timely manner? Question, question, question, there's no real profiling of does this person have a specific accessibility need, and has this somehow affected the way that we've provided value to them or service them and help them, or have we not taken that into consideration? And actually that's led to a bad experience? There's actually no way of knowing right now, because you're not capturing those specific data points so that in terms of modifying existing mechanisms, that's part of what I would do, is really ensuring that you understand when someone has an accessibility need, and then using that to overlay on top of existing metrics, like, For example, time to completion for an onboarding journey, right? You might look at those statistics and go, Oh, the average time to completion is two minutes, but we have 3000 people who are taking seven minutes. That seven minutes could be for a number of reasons, but that seven minutes could also be because we have no accessibility functionality in that part of the journey. And 50% of those people taking seven minutes have accessibility needs. And actually that splicing it by the persona that's more specific and more understood could actually help even improve that top line number and say, Oh, the reason that that number of seven minutes is because people have great accessibility needs, and we're not taking that into account. Let's incorporate some more features that may be taken down a down a different avenue, provide a different route to complete that journey and see if it's better or worse. A couple of modifications to existing mechanisms would make a make a huge difference to even just understanding, does someone have an accessibility or not, and actually, how do we even improve our top line metrics in these different parts of the product? 

Prerna

There's a really powerful insight. You can meet the regulation, you can do the audit, you can do all of that. But actually what you're talking about is you have to think about it throughout your processes. It can't be just you've designed a product, but then you haven't thought about, how am I measuring how that product is doing without thinking about all of the user groups, all of the personas. Most organizations think about personas, but how many of them are thinking about persona which has accessibility needs, which has to be inclusive by design throughout the journey, not just in one part of the journey.

Jas

This isn't a preach for myself, because I've been guilty of this before, where I've created a persona, and the persona is gender, age, salary, occupation for FinTech products, specifically occupation, country residency. But I've never gone, Oh, does this person have an accessibility need? But it's an important one to add, even if it's an optional because, you know, maybe for again, four out of five people will just say, NA or just ignore it, but that one person out of five might say, oh, yeah, I've got an accessibility need, and that helps inform how you shape your product and how you maybe improve and iterate on that journey. So it's again, I guilty of it, but you're spot on. It's important to incorporate it as part of those persona. So really think about, should we add this? Is this a need for maybe not the first 100 customers, because the numbers might not stack up, but the next 900 customers? We should bake this into that process, because even if people don't answer it, it's still there for that 510, 20 people who do, and it really give us extra insights. 

Prerna

You've mentioned it a couple of times as well as one in five is a big number, but also depending on your product and depending on your demographics, that one in five might be higher for your customer base, actually, it might be an even bigger number, but until you do that analysis, you're probably not even understanding how big of that proportion of that population is actually using your product, and the commercial element starts becoming even bigger, potentially based on your product, based on your kind of target segment, and things like that. So thinking a little bit more globally, because I know you've been working in the Middle East recently, and I know you've done work in other areas of the world as well. What have you seen are the differences or nuances of how is accessibility thought about in various parts of the world? What are there any differences, and how does it manifest itself?

Jas

 I haven't seen huge differences. I'd say that sounds almost a bit elitist, but really, with the regulations you described, the American Disabilities Act and the European Accessibility Act, there's not that much that's that detail to that degree in huge areas of other countries, in huge areas across the world. So I think the focus that the US, the States and the West. Again, I know sounds a bit elitist, but the focus of the West, spot on it, I think, is, is the right approach. And I haven't seen that that much in terms of that level of detail and regulation across the world, to be perfectly honest. And again, from my perspective, when I'm working on these projects around the world. I'm always putting it as part of the requirements of new builds is this has to be one of the considerations, because the market demographics aren't too dissimilar. It's not, you know, it's not like, oh, it's one in five in Europe, but it's one in 100 in the Middle East. The numbers aren't too dissimilar. So it's actually just porting over some of what the the EU and the West is doing, and just assuming that there is a regular like, just pretend that there is a regulation, but pretend that you know those market demographics are there, and you're trying to make it more commercially viable. Think about it like that, and then implement it as you would, as if you were building product in the EU but I haven't seen, I haven't seen that many differences, to be perfectly honest. 

Prerna

And that's probably not specific to this regulation. Some parts of the world are just further along in their regulatory journey than others are, and a probably a matter of time before some of these regulations are implemented in those other parts of the world as well, right? And the point you made is actually the underlying demographics and the stats across the world are quite similar. At the end of the day, it's proactively thinking about it. These decisions are made in organizations. Is what is the commercial value? We shouldn't underestimate the importance of that angle, and the numbers speak for themselves, right? Conscious, this is a topic we can spend hours on. So before we wrap up just any final advice, it's great you've been really honest and authentic about the fact that this is something that you hadn't thought about in the past, and you've now been thinking about it more mindfully. The regulation, obviously is going to help. We still have to think about it, not just from the product design, but how we measure and how we then use it to make decisions, any kind of final practical advice, specifically for product designers, product owners, engineering teams, on what should they be thinking about

Jas

I'll try and bullet them as concisely as possible. I think number one is read WCAG 2.1 standards and implement them on day one, or as close to day one as possible. Number one, get a designer or UX person on your team that has inclusive design and accessibility experience, or train someone up, train someone in your existing team to be the expert on those standards and who understands it, and can train others, speak to customers who traditionally fit your ICP. But also look at inclusion, accessibility across that persona spectrum. So really understand what are those edge cases of the personas build accessibility criteria as part of product testing? This is one of the key ones that, again, I think lots of product people are maybe guilty of, is that testing products and ensuring they're accessible at the point of QA isn't really done. It's, it's not part of that even automated testing process, but it can be, and it's. Very easy way to make sure that you're adhering to the guidelines. Do an accessibility audit. These are a lot of points. Do an accessibility audit. And I think the last and maybe most important one, it's the one I outlined in my deep dive last year, is treat accessibility as a core part of the product, not just a bolt on right, accessibility and inclusion as a moat can create competitive advantage over others, and accessibility features that broaden customer base, and again, cover that one in five provides an encouraging reason to potentially switch banks, to potentially stay with your product and and maybe surprise and delight customers in in different ways. So I think the last point treat accessibility Isn't this like bolt on thing that you have to do or you think, you think you might have to do afterwards, treat it as a core feature and potentially build it as something that pulls customers into your product and keeps them there for longer.

Prerna

Love it, and I'm going to include the link to your deep dive. I did read it. It was fantastic. Thinking about this, not as a cost, but as almost a competitive advantage, and using it to actually not just keep your existing customers happy, but pull new customer groups having spoken to the disability community, if they like a product, they are quite vocal about it and they love they're very loyal customers. Like is the case for you know, most customer groups can be a really powerful thing. Listen. Thank you so much. This was absolutely fantastic. Lots of great insight, but also very practical advice, which is brilliant, because engineers, product managers, owners, all of us like to get very practical advice. So that was brilliant. Thank you so much as thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. Keep tuning in to accessible finance by project Nemo, where we are uncovering what disability inclusion is all about from various angles. And we'll be back with another such topic next month. Thank you. You.