Lucy Ryder, Head of UX, Asda
"Michael has been an absolute pleasure to work with during his time at Asda and will be very missed by the UX and wider business teams. He is friendly, positive and motivated and is always happy to help his teammates and mentor others in their own development.
During his time as UX Designer for Online Groceries, Michael has been our accessibility champion and has managed to make huge strides in educating and influencing the wider business on the importance of making our digital products accessible to all. Michael has trained both designers and developers on how to design and build with Accessibility at the forefront and will be leaving Asda in a much better place in terms of carrying on this mission.
During his time as UX Designer for Online Groceries, Michael has been our accessibility champion and has managed to make huge strides in educating and influencing the wider business on the importance of making our digital products accessible to all. Michael has trained both designers and developers on how to design and build with Accessibility at the forefront and will be leaving Asda in a much better place in terms of carrying on this mission.
Michael has also been part of the eCommerce multi-disciplinary squads, working on the delivery of our Digital Roadmap and has produced high-quality, user-centred design solutions and managed engineers through the handover and QA process. He is well experienced in senior stakeholder management and is not afraid to get a place at the table in driving advocacy for our end-users and customers."
Monika Jethani, Senior Android Developer, Asda
"Michael has been instrumental in setting up an Accessibility team, conducting training for the team, creating accessibility content (for all platforms) on the Accessibility Hub, helping the developers understand and to incorporate accessibility into their workflow, creating tickets and working on developing accessibility components.
Thanks Michael for all your contributions towards making Asda apps accessible."
Mark Shahid, Head of UX, Asda
"Hi Michael, I wanted to send you these star points as recognition and appreciation for all your hard work to date on Accessibility within the team. I love the passion and dedication that you bring to evangelising such an important topic to make lives easier for customers with disabilities."
Juliana Almeida, Senior Product Manager, Asda
"I’ve really enjoyed working with you this year on accessibility projects and really want to thank you for you guidance and patience with our ‘test’ on improving A11Y on Your Regulars for web. Nothing was ever too much trouble, and you took on the validation work for it even though you weren’t allocated to the squad and I’m sure you had so much else to do to! You’re very open to ideas, explain the user problems and clearly and empathetically which really brings to life the accessibility issues many of our customers face. You’re methodical as well in your reviews and really took the lead on engaging other product managers to get onboard. The guides you put together for different team members and their role in making our site more accessible and your support with the story writing were really useful in helping us getting started with the work on P13N. Finally, you’re not afraid to challenge others in their thinking but do so respectfully and collaboratively, which is a great attitude for getting folks onside."
Soraya Gallagher, Senior UX Researcher, Asda
"You've showed great leadership skills – you’ve looked at what needed working on (Accessibility) and since you’ve started you’ve had the sole responsibility for this, going above and beyond the role you were hired for. You’ve faced lots of challenges (setting up a whole process, influencing colleagues and bringing them onboard the process despite reluctances due to time and mindsets).
You've had difficult conversations – for where you’ve got to now with accessibility (getting our teams thinking about it and working on it more, and up-skilling the engineers), it shows that you’ve been able to influence, persuade and advocate at a high level – and you’ve mainly done this on your own! Effecting change in a large organisation to this scale can be difficult, so well done!
...I think you show determination, resilience, and you have a superb way of communicating with your colleagues and stakeholders (especially senior and exec) e.g. measured, calm, persuasive, friendly, authoritative and humble."