Accessibility leads to inclusion - insights from the Android, iOS & tvOS audit

Making Pickx accessible for everyone

In March 2024 my colleague Emily Marghella and I carried out a full accessibility audit of the Pickx experience across Android, iOS, tvOS and the V7 set-top box. Working hand-in-hand with Product Owners and developers in short, agile sprints, we turned every finding into a Jira ticket that could be fixed or planned immediately. The result was compelling enough for the Pickx Content Director to invite us to open the Proximus Leadership Event, where our work set the tone for the company’s new inclusion goals.

Why accessibility could not wait

  • 25 % of Pickx customers live with a permanent, temporary or situational impairment.

  • Pickx serves 1.4 million accounts, so the potential impact is huge.

  • The European Accessibility Act, the Digital Inclusion Charter and WCAG 2.1 already make accessibility both a legal obligation and a brand differentiator.

Scope & Method

We focused our audit on three main pillars: platform usability, content accessibility, and research insights each supporting quick execution and long-term change.

1. Platform accessibility (Android, iOS, tvOS, and V7)
We manually and automatically tested the full Pickx experience on all supported devices. This included evaluating screen-reader compatibility (TalkBack and VoiceOver), colour contrast, navigation structure, orientation handling, and font scaling. Each platform was assessed against WCAG 2.1 standards, with benchmarking from other leading TV platforms to identify gaps and best practices.

2. Research & learning
We conducted exploratory user interviews and attended key industry talks (notably by Molly Watt and Vasilis van Gemert) to understand accessibility challenges from a lived-experience perspective. These learnings fed directly into our design recommendations and helped us prioritise fixes that would have the most real-world impact.

All findings were translated into Jira tickets and tackled in collaboration with Product Owners and developers, using short agile sprints to ensure rapid implementation. This approach allowed us to balance quick wins (like fixing contrast or label issues) with deeper technical improvements that required roadmap planning.

What was our impact ?

  • Platform quick wins

    • TalkBack/VoiceOver fully enabled on all screens; focus issues resolved.

    • Colour-contrast harmonised and dynamic text sizing supported.

    • Portrait and landscape now respected (“operable in all orientations”).

Recognition & Next Steps

Our actionable roadmap and concrete results led to a major milestone: we were invited to open the 2024 Proximus Leadership Event, where the Pickx Content Director personally highlighted our impact.

One of the most meaningful outcomes was the creation of an internal accessibility testing panel.
I partnered with the HR team to launch a GDPR-compliant recruitment process, allowing Proximus employees to volunteer as test users whether they experience visual impairments, neurodivergence, or simply want to contribute to a more inclusive product.

Thanks to this initiative, we’ve already run user interviews and usability tests with neurodivergent and visually impaired colleagues, generating actionable insights that would have been impossible to guess through heuristics alone. The panel is now part of our internal toolkit: every squad at Proximus has access to this resource and can use it to test and improve their digital journeys with real users in mind.