Real People. Real Work.
Accord isn’t designed for an abstract “disabled user.” It’s designed for Marcus, who processes 40 claims a day with a screen reader. For Jordan, who has always been afraid to admit that the forms simply don’t make sense. For Priya, whose wrists gave out and whose voice became her keyboard. For David, who can see perfectly well — just not at 100% zoom. For Amara, who scans through 50 interface elements before she reaches her first data field. And for Tom, who still wants to work a full shift. Accord supports all six AT paths — screen readers, plain language, voice control, screen magnification, switch access, and eye tracking.
Marcus has processed claims for over a decade, but the agency’s claims portal has never been updated for accessibility. Every morning, he opens the portal and NVDA announces: “unlabelled field, unlabelled combo box, unlabelled button, unlabelled button.”
He’s built up an elaborate mental map from years of practice — Tab 3 times to reach the claimant ID field, Tab 5 times for the injury category, then Tab 7 more for the date picker. Every new screen requires a fresh session of trial-and-error exploration before he can start actual work.
On average, Marcus takes 22 minutes to process a single complex claim — four times longer than his sighted colleagues. The extra time isn’t due to his disability. It’s the direct result of inaccessible software.
With Accord’s Screen Reader Mode active, NVDA now announces every element correctly: “Claimant ID, text field, W hyphen 4 8 2 0 1”. Marcus tabs through the form at full speed — no guessing, no trial and error.
Accord’s live sync means that when the form validates and shows an error, NVDA reads the error message immediately — something the original portal never surfaced. Marcus catches mistakes on the first pass rather than discovering them at submission.
His claim processing time dropped from 22 minutes to under 3 minutes for complex claims. He now consistently leads his team in throughput — not despite his use of a screen reader, but because Accord finally let him work at full speed.
Jordan has been terrified of the HR benefits portal since she started the job. The forms are dense with legal citations, passive constructions, and multi-part sentences that she has to re-read three or four times before she even knows what’s being asked.
Her ADHD means losing her place mid-paragraph happens constantly — and there are no visual cues to help her re-orient. She’s submitted incomplete forms, got them returned, and spent entire afternoons trying to figure out what she missed. She’s never told her manager why.
She developed workarounds: she prints forms, annotates them by hand, and then transfers the data back to the screen. It takes three times as long as it should and she burns through paper. She does it because it’s the only way she can actually follow what the form is asking.
With Accord’s Plain Language Mode, Jordan sees the same portal — but every instruction has been rewritten. The form is broken into four clearly-labelled steps. Each section has its own colour. The progress indicator shows “Step 2 of 4.”
The dense policy citation above now reads: “If you were absent for more than 3 working days in a row, submit this form within 5 business days. Do not count public holidays.” Jordan reads it once and knows exactly what to do.
She stopped printing forms the first week. Her error rate on returned submissions dropped to zero. Most meaningfully: she told her manager she has dyslexia — for the first time in five years — because Accord made her feel like the problem was the software, not her.
Priya’s repetitive strain injury made sustained keyboard and mouse use impossible. She switched to Dragon NaturallySpeaking in 2021. Her voice became her primary input — but the firm’s document management system was never designed for it.
Every interactive element is labelled “Button,” “Button,” “Link.” Dragon can’t distinguish between them. To click anything specific, Priya says “show numbers,” waits for overlays to appear across every element, identifies the right number, and says it. For each action. On a busy drafting day, she issues 200+ navigation commands just to move between menus and fields — on top of the dictation itself.
The system that was supposed to give her independence in the office had made every workflow slower and more frustrating than before.
Accord’s Voice Control Mode gives every interactive element in the DMS a unique, speakable name. “Open contract” opens the right document. “Send to review” advances the workflow. “Add note” opens the annotation field. No number overlays, no scanning.
Accord maps 40+ common legal workflow phrases to the firm’s DMS controls — phrases Priya actually uses, not ones IT invented. When she dictates a new clause and says “insert here,” the cursor is already where it needs to be.
Navigation commands dropped by 70%. Priya now drafts contracts at close to the pace she typed at before her injury. More importantly, the voice interface finally feels like an upgrade rather than a workaround.
David has central vision loss from macular degeneration. At the 350% magnification he needs, most financial software becomes a fragmented puzzle. The account dashboard shows him data — but the column headers are off-screen. He can see numbers without knowing what they represent.
Dropdown menus open beyond the viewport edge and disappear. Tooltips vanish before he can read them. Each account review requires pan-scrolling back and forth to mentally reconstruct the layout — enormous cognitive overhead on top of already demanding analytical work.
His workaround: copy data into a separate spreadsheet and label columns by hand. He spends the first 10 minutes of every review just building a readable version of data that already exists on screen.
Accord’s Magnification Mode reflowes the account dashboard into a single-column layout at high zoom, without breaking any functionality. Column headers stay pinned at the top of the viewport regardless of scroll position. Dropdowns open inward. Tooltips are replaced with persistent inline labels that don’t disappear.
David can read a full account at 350% with the same flow a colleague gets at 100% — top to bottom, no horizontal scrolling, no reconstruction. He stopped building workaround spreadsheets the first day.
His account review time dropped from 18 minutes to 7 minutes on average. More significantly, his error rate on flagged anomalies dropped by 40% — because he can now see context and data together, instead of trying to hold both in working memory.
Amara uses a 2-button switch interface to navigate everything on her computer. One switch advances the scan highlight; the other selects. She’s fast, efficient, and has been doing data entry for six years. The software is the problem.
The logistics portal scans in DOM order. That means Amara must advance through 34 navigation items, 12 filter buttons, and 4 sort controls before the scan reaches her first data entry field. On a good day it takes 45 seconds of scanning just to start working. On a bad day, she activates the wrong element and the page navigates away — starting the whole scan from the top.
She processes the same volume as her colleagues, but her hands ache by afternoon — not from data entry, but from the 50 switch presses it takes to get there.
Accord’s Switch Access Mode restructures the scan order so data entry fields form a priority group that appears first. Navigation, filters, and sort controls are collapsed into a secondary group Amara can skip entirely. She reaches her first input in 3 scans.
Accord also labels each scan group before it begins: “Data Entry — 4 items” tells Amara exactly what’s in the group before she enters it. She never activates the wrong section by mistake. When she finishes a record, the next record’s first field is automatically focused.
Her error rate dropped significantly — fewer accidental navigations away from the form. Her afternoon fatigue dropped more. For the first time in six years, she consistently clears her full queue before end of day.
Tom was diagnosed with ALS four years ago. He still wants to work — his employer wants to support him — but the insurance CRM was not designed with dwell-click users in mind. Buttons are 18×18 pixels. Interactive elements cluster together with 2-pixel gaps.
Dropdown menus close before his 800ms dwell registers a click. He activates the wrong record an average of 12 times per shift. Each mistake requires a chain of dwell actions to undo. By early afternoon, his eyes are strained to the point of headaches and he has to stop for 30-minute rests.
His employer has been asking, gently, whether he wants to reduce his hours. Tom doesn’t. The software is the problem, not his capacity.
Accord’s Eye Tracking Mode enlarges every interactive element in the CRM to a minimum 44×44px dwell target. A 200ms gap buffer between adjacent elements prevents accidental activation when his gaze passes between buttons. Dropdown dwell windows extend to 1200ms — enough time for a reliable click.
A soft visual ring shows Tom where his gaze is dwelling and fills in as the dwell timer progresses — giving him clear feedback without demanding more eye movement. When a dwell activates accidentally, a 1-second undo window appears at a corner of the screen.
Accidental activations dropped from 12 per shift to under 4. Tom now works a full day without the afternoon rest breaks. He told his manager he doesn’t want reduced hours. The software finally agrees.
Your Workers
Most workers with disabilities don’t disclose. They build workarounds. They fall behind and assume it’s their fault. Accord gives organizations a way to help before anyone has to ask.