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Hinge: Building an Accessibility Program from Scratch
Built Hinge's accessibility program from a handful of reference pages into a company-wide practice spanning design, engineering, QA, research, and product strategy — including features like Match Note, shipped in direct response to LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent dater feedback.
The Challenge
When I joined Hinge in early 2025, accessibility lived in a handful of scattered Notion pages. There was no documented design lifecycle, no persona library grounded in real assistive technology use, and no shared guidance for screen reader support on iOS or Android. QA had no testing protocol, nobody could track compliance against deadlines like the European Accessibility Act, and designers had no standing place to bring accessibility questions.
The Goal
Turn accessibility into an embedded practice rather than a periodic fire drill — with a documented design lifecycle, real assistive-technology-grounded personas, engineering references, a QA protocol, and compliance tracking that could survive team turnover and scale across product teams as Hinge grew.
The Solution
As Hinge's accessibility lead, I started by giving the practice a home. In March 2025 I published a Design + Accessibility framework that maps specific considerations onto every phase of the design lifecycle (Align, Define, Explore, Refine, Deliver), which became the anchor of a new internal Accessibility Hub. A month later I drafted a phased roadmap and launched twice-weekly accessibility office hours, which became the main way designers and engineers brought in-flight work for review.
From there I built the reference library teams work from every day: eleven disability personas grounded in real assistive technology use, mobile design guidelines, a design checklist with a Figma annotation kit, a spec template so component owners document accessibility behavior consistently, a shared glossary, and VoiceOver and TalkBack testing protocols for QA.
Making accessibility standard practice at Hinge
The strategy, design guidance, testing protocols and training I created as Hinge's accessibility lead, taking the practice from a few reference pages to a shared, company-wide way of working.
- 2025–2026
- 20 documents
- Design, product, engineering and QA
Program milestones
- Mar 2025
- Design + Accessibility framework goes live
- Apr 2025
- Twice-weekly office hours begin
- Oct 2025
- State of the Union and four-pillar plan
- Early 2026
- Standards, QA guide and onboarding curriculum
- May 2026
- Deque audit: 3–5 issues per page vs. a 10–12 average
Strategy 5 files
- Design + Accessibility PlanPhased roadmap to build the foundation
- Accessibility State of the UnionSix-month report and four-pillar plan
- Accessibility Standards 2026Prioritized design system roadmap, P0 to P3
- Accessibility Design Strategy 2026–2027Two-year direction for the practice
- Opportunity Sizing ScorecardWeighing product and ops work by impact
Design guidance 6 files
- Design + Accessibility FrameworkCheckpoints for every phase, Align to Deliver
- Accessibility PersonasEleven personas grounded in assistive tech use
- Mobile Accessibility Design GuidelinesPatterns for iOS and Android
- Design Accessibility ChecklistWith a Figma annotation kit
- Accessibility Spec TemplateHow each component documents its behavior
- Convo Starters Accessibility FrameworkRequirements for a new feature
Testing and QA 4 files
- Accessibility Testing GuideVoiceOver and TalkBack protocols for QA
- Desktop Web Testing GuideKeyboard and screen reader checks for web
- Mobile Component Test PlanTest cases for core components
- Mobile Testing ToolkitCurated tools for engineers
Training and enablement 5 files
- Designer Accessibility OnboardingStart-here guide for new product designers
- Role-Based Learning PlansFor designers, PMs, engineers and QA
- Accessibility Reviews ProcessHow to request initial and handoff reviews
- Accessibility GlossaryShared terms across product teams
- AI Assistant InstructionsPrompting for accessible mobile design and code
I planned and designed product equity and accessibility features for user-generated media (video, photo and voice notes) and in-app widgets, partnering with UX Research to turn disabled daters' feedback into shipped features. Match Note, which lets daters privately share details about identity, lifestyle or relationship preferences before chatting, was inspired by feedback from LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent daters looking for clearer, lower-pressure ways to set expectations. It shipped publicly in February 2025. Per Hinge, 83% of trans+ daters say it lets them express their true selves, and 68% of daters with a Match Note say it helps them find better compatibility.
I also led experience strategy for Convo Starters across the Dating Outcomes and Growth squads. Daters were rarely adding a comment when sending a like, which held back matches. I set the interaction pattern, placement and accessibility requirements and scoped an MVP with engineering. The result was 2× matches across the feature and more than $10M in incremental annual revenue.
To make accessibility part of how work gets done rather than a late-stage check, I helped embed checkpoints across the product development lifecycle and formalized an accessibility review process in February 2026, so designers and engineers request initial and handoff reviews before work ships. I wrote the tickets and acceptance criteria engineering shipped against, prioritizing issues against European Accessibility Act deadlines. I led Hinge's switch from its previous accessibility vendor to Deque, then set up designer training and empathy workshops with them, ran annotation training in-house, and arranged Deque University courses for the wider team. Our QA training earned a 100% positive survey response.
My October 2025 Accessibility State of the Union reported six months of progress across design, engineering and research, and proposed a four-pillar Accessibility Transformation Plan: Product Access, Inclusive Connection, Sustainable Practice and Culture Impact. In early 2026, I established the accessibility standards for Hinge's design process and scored improvements with the Design Systems team, prioritizing flash protection first, then alt text and single-pointer alternatives, loading and error states, contrast, and support for OS-level settings. A skills framework now benchmarks design-system and accessibility competency, including screen reader proficiency, and a live dashboard tracks accessibility bugs by WCAG level, team, and time to resolve.
The Impact
In about eighteen months, accessibility at Hinge went from a few reference pages to a shared practice with its own hub, standards, review process, testing protocols and role-based onboarding for designers, PMs, engineers and QA.
When Deque completed a full iOS and Android audit of the app in May 2026, Hinge averaged 3 to 5 issues per page, against a cross-client average of 10 to 12. The work reached beyond Hinge: I helped start a cross-brand accessibility working group across Match Group, and my Disability Pride Month campaign drew engagement from Hinge's executive team.
