Accessibility for emotionally considerate and sustainable business services

As a company focused on digital media and services, Alma Media considers the usability, reliability, and accessibility of its services to be essential factors in building customer experience and growing audiences. The company’s value base also underlies this, as Alma’s purpose is to accelerate the sustainable growth of individuals, businesses, and society, and growth is achieved when individuals have the freedom and opportunity to make choices through information and services. 

Kia Lieke and Lars Holm, who work with accessibility at Alma, emphasize the importance of human-centeredness and taking emotions into account, as well as combining the needs of the customer, technology, and business.  

Accessibility of media content and services is part of Alma Media’s purpose, which creates sustainable growth for individuals, businesses, and society. “This is not just an ethical value but also a business value, as accessible services enable reaching a larger audience and thus the realization of our more sustainable purpose,” says Lars Holm, Head of Design.  

Accessibility plays a big role in making information and services available and consumable for everyone.

In the video, Lars Holm talks about accessibility from a design perspective.

“Alma promotes societal diversity, democracy, and freedom of speech through its media. The need for reliable and fact-based information has become more pronounced today amidst disinformation and influence attempts,” describes Holm. In addition, Alma’s marketplaces and other services benefit users in everyday life, work, and leisure, enabling solutions to meaningful needs.  

Standards and customer and business needs, one Lego block at a time  

Alma employs hundreds of technology professionals, and the company develops its marketplaces and service platforms into more advanced trading and content platforms. This means also working for even better accessibility and user experience. Alma sees accessibility and sustainable design as an ongoing process, which is an essential part of today’s digital business.  

“A good and accessible service is good business,” notes Holm, adding, “Accessibility aims to grow our audiences in addition to providing a good customer experience, as the broader the audience base we create products or services for, the more sustainable they are. When we talk about design in this context, design is part of guided problem-solving.”  

Holm works in the Alma News Media unit, which includes Finland’s largest digital news media Iltalehti, leading financial news media Kauppalehti, and Alma’s other journalistic media. Alma News Media’s design system provides a common platform for producing user interfaces for different brands and developing user experience. Holm describes the use of the design system as Lego blocks, which are all compatible, logical pieces that can be used to build various inspiring entities. With the design system, the company can update all the products in its portfolio at once, considering business and technology needs simultaneously. This also ensures that each service meets accessibility standards and uses the same common models and elements while maintaining its own recognizable identity.  

“Centralized brand management is familiar from graphic design and marketing, but through the design system, we can manage the entire portfolio at once in digital development in a similar way. However, this does not mean just refining visuals, but a way of thinking about the entire development work,” Holm explains.  

Accessibility is the key to an emotionally considerate customer experience  

Accessibility at Alma is not just about complying with directives, but also about creating a feeling that services are designed for everyone and that everyone has an equal opportunity to find information, consume content, and utilize services.  

In the video, Kia Lieke shares her thoughts on accessibility and emotions.

“A web service is usable and accessible when all people can use it without frustration due to difficult navigation or cumbersome data entry. Accessibility is like a small safety blanket in your hand as you navigate online, taking care of meaningful matters to you,” describes Kia Lieke, Accessibility and Testing Specialist.  

Lieke works with Alma’s housing services, where issues related to services like Etuovi.com or Vuokraovi.com are very personal and emotional for users, and web services cannot neglect this aspect of the customer experience. When a service is accessible, taking care of necessary matters and finding information is effortless. “The service should not make anyone feel excluded. Accessibility allows the consumer to decide whether they belong to a brand’s target group, rather than the brand defining who does not belong,” Lieke summarizes.  

Read more about Alma’s sustainability

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