Meet Amro: Driving Now Platform accessibility

According to the World Health Organisation, around 1.3 billion people—that’s 16% of the global population—experience significant disability. This includes individuals with physical, cognitive, sensory, and neurological impairments, all of whom deserve the same level of access to digital tools as anyone else.

That’s why the accessibility engineering team at ServiceNow works diligently to help ensure the Now Platform^® provides an inclusive experience for everyone.

Going beyond just useable

Amro A., director of accessibility engineering at ServiceNow, leads the team toward its overarching goal: to provide access to the Now Platform for everyone who wants it.

“We test against a lot of accessibility requirements,” Amro says. While many organisations adhere to basic accessibility standards and regulations that allow users with disabilities to use their platforms, Amro and his team recognise a need to do more.

“The product needs to be usable by different disability groups as standard, but usable doesn’t necessarily mean accessible,” he explains. “If a user with a mobility issue is spending five minutes navigating a single landing page that should take seconds to click through, sure, it’s usable—but that’s not reasonably accessible in a busy office environment.”

Accessibility in action

Making the Now Platform accessible requires extensive engineering, all driven by specific user feedback.

“Take the example of a user with mobility issues who relies solely on a keyboard for navigation,” Amro says. “Integrating specific keyboard shortcuts mitigates the need to press the tab key hundreds of times to get around a page.” Solutions like this can have a real impact on the day-to-day lives of users.

Similarly, the team has worked to engineer offerings that improve the user experience for people with visual impairments or dyslexia. The Now Platform is compatible with external screen readers, browser zoom tools, and even external plug-ins or extensions that allow users to change the font type, colour, and size.

“We have people in research roles dedicated to accessibility-specific research,” Amro says. “They conduct studies that provide us with relevant feedback from users, which we then apply directly to our engineering so we can be sure we’re making ServiceNow as accessible as possible for everyone.”

Accessibility as an ongoing priority

Amro’s team acts as an accessibility centre of excellence for the entire organisation. Their responsibilities include scaling accessibility options as the platform grows.

“The biggest challenges for us are understanding how we deploy our team in the most efficient manner and training our quality engineers to deliver standout work,” Amro says. “We have internal training programmes that we run regularly, as well as external sessions to help drive a better understanding of how we assume the persona of those we’re engineering for and deliver something that genuinely improves their experience.”

The team works constantly to adapt and evolve the platform in line with customer feedback and business growth. They’re on a mission to continue to make work better for all ServiceNow customers.

Find out more about ServiceNow's commitment to accessibility.