// Case study 02 · Accessibility governance · Avaloq
An EU directive sets a date and a standard. It does not supply a method — no regulation does.
Avaloq's design team ran the accessibility work. I made the instrument they audit with: an that checks surfaces rather than features, and a status taxonomy carrying a third value — inherited — so a criterion resolved once at the platform is never re-litigated on the forty-first form.
Below, that sheet is live. Change a value; watch the verdict turn.
I made the instrument. The readings are Avaloq's — adoption, what the audit found, what it cost to fix. That data isn't mine to publish. What I can show you is the instrument, running.
The audit was the team's. The method, the surface taxonomy and the inherited status are mine — which is why I still have the sheet.
Auditing feature by feature would never have finished. So the unit of audit became the surface — the recurring construct that every feature is assembled from. Four carry their own criteria. The fifth carries everyone else's.
Every control on the bench is a decision a designer or developer actually makes. The sheet on the right is the inspection sheet rebuilt in this site's own system — same taxonomy, same status vocabulary, same shape as the one the team works from. It re-renders as you work.
Ten criteria · yours to failPick a surface
Controls Tables
Savings plan overviewconformant
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| Instrument | Frequency | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| SGS Ltd Nam.CH0009000016 | Monthly | EUR 50 | Active |
| Credit Agricole SAFR0009000029 | Monthly | EUR 75 | Active |
| Nestlé SA Nam.CH0009000032 | Monthly | EUR 100 | Paused |
| Novartis AG NamenCH0009000040 | Monthly | EUR 125 | Closed |
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EUR. Maximum EUR 10,000 per execution.
Amount exceeds the EUR 10,000 limit. Enter a lower amount or split the plan.
Format DD.MM.YYYY.
Component · Status indicators
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IBAN checksum failed. Swiss IBANs are 21 characters — this one is 22. Check the digits after CH93.
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Accessibility · specimen Passed
Specimens and inspection sheet are reconstructed in this site's own system. Instruments are real companies; identifiers and positions are illustrative.
The first version of this template made every feature test all ten criteria. It was correct and it was unusable — nobody was going to re-measure the focus ring on the forty-first form.
So the taxonomy grew a third status. Inherited means the criterion is satisfied by a governed platform component, was audited once against Web apps & web services, and is carried by every feature that consumes it. A feature audit only tests what the feature itself introduces.
Open the platform block on the sheet, then switch surfaces. The four blue rows are identical on Tables, Forms, Status indicators and Transactions — same criteria, same wording, same source. That repetition isn't laziness in the artifact. It's the mechanism: a single platform pass, then nothing to re-litigate. Which is why the sheet keeps them folded shut until you ask.
Every control here is reachable and operable from the keyboard alone. Each slider is duplicated by a −/+ button, so no part of this page depends on a dragging movement — the same criterion the artifact marks inherited. The verdict panel is a live region, so it is announced rather than merely shown. Contrast ratios are computed with the WCAG relative-luminance formula, not estimated.
Claiming accessibility work without shipping an accessible artifact would be the tell.
How many defects the sheet surfaced, how fast they closed, how the platform scores today, what any of it cost — that is Avaloq's data. It is not mine to publish, and a portfolio that published it would be telling you something about my judgement rather than my work.
So the evidence here is the instrument itself, rebuilt and running. You can operate every control, break every criterion, and read the verdict it produces. If the method holds up under that, the numbers it produced elsewhere are a formality — and if it doesn't, no number I quoted would have saved it.
The same rule governs every case on this site: the artifact is the evidence, the client keeps the outcome.