How Snapfish Made Online Accessibility a Focal Point in their Changing Company Culture

Snapfish approached accessibility with a single goal—achieve compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). But the retailer quickly realized that accessibility was about much more. It was an opportunity to empower and delight their customers—a way to provide each one with a positive shopping experience. Today, Senior Program Manager Bakty Motiram leads a maturing program that is setting the standard among sister retailers.

Snapfish considered various free and third-party accessibility solutions. One by one, they were eliminated. Too limited in scope. Too little real-world expertise. Too long of a lead time. “We chose Level Access for their competence working with companies like ours,” said Motiram. “They were deeply knowledgeable about the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG), had advanced knowledge and training, and their roadmap to compliance was thoughtfully laid out. Above all, they showed urgency in helping us reduce our liability.”

Early on, Snapfish focused on quick fixes to improve their most popular product—photo prints. They soon realized they could increase efficiency by shifting accessibility upstream into the development cycle to find and fix issues earlier, preventing many risks from reaching their interface. “Accessibility isn’t a one-time fix,” said Motiram. “It’s a cultural change. It should be a routine best practice like managing data privacy. It’s an essential part of running the business.”

With Level Access software and training rooted in their User Experience, Quality Assurance, and Development teams, accessibility is now an interdepartmental standard for success. Snapfish is exceeding internal targets, strengthening their user experience, and achieving better results in fewer development cycles.

With Level Access, Snapfish developed a mature accessibility program with centralized leadership, tools, and procedures. So as Shutterfly joins the portfolio family, the two online photo retailers are normalizing accessibility best practices. Despite a smaller staff, Motiram’s team is helping lead the way as Shutterfly assesses Snapfish’s established accessibility program and its positive impact on the user experience for people with disabilities.

“Accessibility isn’t just about limiting liability,” Motiram tells her team. “It’s about delighting customers. All individuals should be able to personalize and order photo products of their favorite memories—regardless of disability.” Snapfish leadership agrees. Their commitment to accessibility as a long-term, companywide priority helps drive their success.

Today, Snapfish and Shutterfly are pursuing creation of an interorganizational steering committee to champion accessibility, to be comprised of leaders in Legal, Marketing, Product, Operations, and other departments. Its goal? Grow the accessibility program into a robust, shared service that works across all teams and functions for sustainable, platform-wide improvements.

Snapfish came to Level Access with a simple goal of compliance. They instead found a partnership that’s driven change across their growing business—well beyond ad hoc testing or siloed solutions. With Level’s Customer Success team by their side, Snapfish is addressing the code-level practices behind inaccessible design, ensuring that future iterations of their websites are accessible by default.

“We’ve embraced Level Access’s mission to ensure that people with disabilities can experience technology equally,” said Motiram. “We’ve championed that internally and are seeing real change. Since improving our accessibility, we’ve seen a boost in SEO and organic search rankings. We’ve received great feedback from customers about the improved UX. Accessibility has improved Snapfish for everyone.”