Why should we care about building accessible products? – Dee Miller (Director, Product Strategy & Insights, Adobe)

In this episode of The Product Experience, Lily Smith and Randy Silver speak with Dee Miller, Director of Product Strategy and Insights for Product Equity at Adobe. Dee shares her personal journey into inclusive design, and discusses how Adobe is moving beyond accessibility compliance to build genuinely usable, inclusive, and emotionally accessible products.

Featured Links: Follow Dee on LinkedIn | The Adobe Accessibility Checker | Listen to previous The Product Experience episode: 'Building Accessible Products' with Jonathan Hassell (CEO & Founder, Hassell Inclusion)

Chapters
00:00 – Accessibility is a journey, not a destination
01:05 – Meet D. Miller: Accessibility through personal and professional lenses
03:12 – Defining accessibility beyond compliance
05:00 – Cultural, economic, and cognitive dimensions of accessibility
07:03 – The gaps in accountability and usability
09:03 – Bringing lived experience into the room
12:22 – Embedding accessibility into team goals and measurements
16:05 – Content consumption vs. creation: Adobe's strategy
17:53 – Building a culture of accessibility champions
19:35 – Practical role-based accessibility advice
21:07 – Accessibility vs. shipping speed and MVP pressure
24:43 – Accessibility as part of feature completeness
26:00 – Accessibility features that became product superstars
31:31 – Product equity: Adobe's broader mission
34:06 – Measuring accessible experiences, not just features
35:59 – Impact of US DEI shifts on global accessibility work

Key takeaways

— Accessibility is a journey, not a checkbox or one-time effort. It's an ongoing cultural and design mindset.
— Beyond compliance – Usability and emotional accessibility are as important as meeting technical standards.
— Inclusion starts with representation. Involving people with lived experience early and often leads to better product outcomes.
— Accountability must be structured. Tie accessibility goals to OKRs, performance reviews, and team incentives.
— Design for one, benefit many. Features built for accessibility often evolve into broadly used innovations (e.g. dark mode, voice assistants).
— Accessibility is design, not just QA, 40% of accessibility issues originate at the design stage; integrating accessibility into design systems is key.
— Hyper-localisation matters. Especially for global products, cultural context and local norms must shape accessible experiences.