🎙️ The Digital Accessibility Podcast – Zoe Portlock

In this episode of The Digital Accessibility Podcast, we sit down with Zoe Portlock, Accessibility Lead at Hargreaves Lansdown, who brings a powerful mix of user-centered design expertise, lived experience, and strategic leadership to digital accessibility in the financial services sector.

From her role embedding accessibility into HL’s design and research functions to speaking at global events like axe-con, Zoe is helping shape a more inclusive approach to digital finance.

We discuss:

• Building accessibility into process and culture – how Zoe has worked to make accessibility a standard part of HL’s products and services.
• Creating inclusive research – the evolution of HL’s accessibility panel and how it helped shift accessibility research into the core of their UX practice.
• The accessibility community – why connection with other specialists has been a critical part of Zoe’s journey, and which networks she recommends.
• Lived experience and leadership – how Zoe brings personal insight into her professional work, and how she balances advocacy with objectivity.
• Advice for new starters – practical tips for organisations just beginning their accessibility journey, and how to start small but meaningfully.

Whether you’re building accessibility into a legacy system or designing a product from scratch, Zoe’s approach offers useful, realistic strategies for embedding inclusion into digital design.

Follow Zoe Portlock:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoemportlock/

Follow Joe James:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joeajames/

Twitter (X): @A11yJoe

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PCRDigital