Case study · Visa
Tap to Phone Accessibility
Making tap-to-phone payments work without sight - shaped by a week of testing with people with disabilities.
- Role
- Design Engineer
- Timeline
- 2023
- Accessibility
- User Research
- WCAG
- Haptics
- increase in user satisfaction
- +60%
- of testing with people with disabilities
- 1 week
- patent co-invented
- 1
Overview
I led engineering on Tap to Phone accessibility - voiceover, vibration, and gestures that let visually impaired users transact independently - then took it through a week-long user-testing session with people with disabilities, translating what we observed into WCAG-compliant product changes.
Challenge
A touchscreen has no physical keys to feel for. For someone who can't see the screen, paying on a phone has to work through sound, vibration, and gesture alone - and stay secure while it does.
Approach
I led the engineering for the accessible flow: voiceover, vibration, and gestures designed so visually impaired users could complete a transaction on their own.
Then we tested it for a week with people with disabilities. Each day the team captured observations, sorted them into problems and ideas, and ranked the fixes by effort and priority to decide what to change first.
Outcome
The gaps we observed that week became WCAG-compliant product changes, and user satisfaction rose 60%.
The work also led to a patent I co-invented: using haptic feedback to make mobile payments more usable and secure for people with visual impairments.
From the research week
Select any image to view it larger.
Team huddle during the testing week Ranking fixes by effort and priority