Enterprise UX & Accessibility at Scale
Correctional systems often carry public stigma. But the reality is simple: regardless of public perception, these facilities support real people — families, staff, and incarcerated individuals — who rely on clear, accessible information every day.
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At the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC), digital experiences are not just websites. They are critical access points for visitation, reentry resources, family support, and public transparency.
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We do not choose who enters the system. But we do have a responsibility to ensure the information surrounding it is usable, accessible, and humane.
The Challenge
IDOC’s digital environment serves 21 facilities that often function as independent operational ecosystems. Variations in technical maturity, infrastructure, and available resources created significant fragmentation across the user experience.
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Key constraints included:
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Uneven technology adoption across facilities
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Tight public-sector budget realities
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Legacy content structures and inconsistent governance
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Accessibility risks in aging digital systems
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Diverse user groups with high emotional and informational needs
The opportunity was not simply to redesign pages, but to create sustainable experience standards that could scale across a complex statewide system.
Outcomes & Impact
Improvements extended beyond the public website. As standards and patterns matured, the same framework scaled to support broader communications across the organization.
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Applying consistent structure and accessibility practices to newsletters, Scoop slides, and internal communications reduced rework and improved clarity across channels. Teams were able to move faster while maintaining consistent formatting and messaging.
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Key outcomes
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Accessibility score improved: 60.4 → 85.0
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Bounce rate reduced: 28.6% → 10.9%
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Increased consistency across recurring communications
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Faster turnaround for routine updates and announcements
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Together, these changes strengthened the organization’s ability to deliver timely, accessible information while maintaining a cohesive digital experience across a complex statewide environment.
My Approach
To address the growing complexity, I focused on building a coordinated UX practice rather than making isolated design changes. The work combined multiple signals to pinpoint where the experience was breaking down and prioritize improvements.
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Signals and tools used
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Siteimprove: monitored accessibility and content quality across the ecosystem
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GA4: identified behavior patterns, high-friction pages, and bounce risks
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Funnelback search data: revealed what users struggled to find
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Hotjar: surfaced interaction patterns not always visible in traditional analytics
Equally important was the human side of the work. I facilitated working sessions with executive and cross-functional partners to review findings, align on priorities, and build shared ownership around accessibility and content standards. These conversations helped shift the organization from one-off fixes toward sustainable, system-level improvements.
Alongside the research and alignment work, I introduced consistent patterns for content structure, homepage updates, and digital communications—giving teams sustainable guidance aligned with public-sector constraints.
Aligning on the Right Problem
Before moving into solutions, I partnered with cross-functional stakeholders to clarify the core business and user problems driving friction across the experience.
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Given that approximately 1 in 4 U.S. adults lives with a disability—and an estimated 4–10% of web users rely directly on assistive technologies—accessibility gaps represented both a usability risk and an equity concern within the statewide digital ecosystem.
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This alignment work ensured the team focused on sustainable, system-level improvements rather than isolated fixes.
This alignment reduced solution churn and kept cross-functional teams focused on measurable, high-impact outcomes.
Reflection
This work changed how I think about digital experience in the public sector. I came in focused on usability and accessibility as design priorities, but quickly saw the real operational impact behind the screens.
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Improving clarity, accessibility, and consistency was not just about better interfaces. It directly affected how quickly families could find visitation information, how confidently staff could share resources, and how effectively the agency could communicate with the public.
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Working in the corrections space also reshaped my understanding of how deeply digital systems influence day-to-day realities. When information is hard to find or inconsistent, the consequences ripple outward. When it is clear and accessible, it reduces confusion and supports safer, more informed decisions across the ecosystem.
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This experience strengthened my commitment to building practical, sustainable improvements that help complex organizations communicate clearly, operate more efficiently, and better support the communities they serve.
