What does it take to consolidate 234 websites into 18, and make every single page accessible, discoverable, and built to last? In this episode, we sit down with Nathalie Blanchard, Manager of Digital Marketing at the University of Ottawa, to explore what it means to treat accessibility as a quality standard, not a compliance checkbox. Nathalie shares how her team manages 62,000 pages across a fully bilingual digital ecosystem and why she believes accessibility and content performance are inseparable. From embedding inclusive design at the component level to leveraging AI to shift her team from analysis to action, Nathalie offers a candid look at how the University of Ottawa is building digital experiences that work for everyone. She also weighs in on the rise of AEO, the risks of vibe coding, and why the future of accessibility will always require a human at the center. A must-listen for any digital leader ready to turn accessibility into a strategic advantage.
Episode 3 – transcript
Linh: Welcome back to the Accessible Brand Podcast, where accessibility is no longer optional. It's a brand, legal, and revenue concern. Here we bring leaders who build for it and share valuable insights and practices. Today, we're honored to be joined by Nathalie Blanchard from the University of Ottawa, the largest bilingual university in the world, both in French and English, and located at the heart of Canada's capital city in Ottawa, Ontario.
The university is also known for being a top research university in AI and data science, health science, and medicine, among other fields.
Now Natalie is a digital communication strategist and web operations manager with over 25 years of experience leading large-scale digital transformation initiatives in complex institutional environments. She currently serves as the manager of digital marketing at the University of Ottawa where she oversees digital communications, web strategy, and a cross-functional team responsible for web transformation initiatives. Natalie is also known as a community builder coaching local entrepreneurs on digital strategy.
And today we're excited to celebrate a major milestone with Natalie for the University of Ottawa, the recognition as a Siteimprove Global Accessibility Award winner, a testament to our team's commitment to accessible, inclusive and high performing digital experiences. Nathalie, congratulations to you and your team at Ottawa U. Thank you so much and thank you for the invitation. Let's start with an introduction of yourself. Tell us a little bit about who you are, your journey, and the University of Ottawa.
Nathalie: So I currently lead the team of digital marketing at the university. We have three digital strategists, one UX/UI designer, and one developer, web developer, and they're responsible for governance, strategy, and the day-to-day operations of our very large web ecosystem. We support 18 institutional websites across English and French, and we work closely with our partners across faculties and services in all things web. As for me, I started my career when websites didn't even exist. So I've witnessed the evolution of the web, socials, and now AI.
You know, it's been very, very exciting because it never really settles. The tools evolve, the expectations change. And now with AI, even how people discover and consume information is shifting. You're constantly adapting to a new version of the same challenge. And that's just kept it just so interesting.
Linh: Yes, and I'm sure it takes grit too, as you say, to see so much evolution throughout your career and this full journey. And we're at another inflection point, as you say.
Your team's just won the Siteimprove Global Accessibility Award. Tell us a little bit about what does this mean to you and the team?
Nathalie: This is such an important recognition. It means that the work that we've been doing behind the scenes, often very technical, very detailed, nobody really sees what we're doing, right? You don't see it on the front-facing website, but that means that all that work is making an impact at scale. It's a validation of consistency over time. For the team, it's important because they're the ones doing the work day in and day out, and it shows that their efforts are moving the needle in a meaningful way.
Linh: Well, congratulations again and thank you for the work that you do. Now let's shift a little bit towards the university as a whole. Can you share a little bit about the scope, your reach of the university across the websites that you are responsible for?
Nathalie: Sure thing. So 18 sites in French and English, that's 60,000 pages over, 62,241, if memory serves from yesterday. And, you know, we have 21 million visitors on our website each year. So it's quite a bit to manage. We have a lot of users as well. So it's quite a big ecosystem to take care of.
Linh: And as you lead transformation initiatives, what would you say are the biggest challenges when it comes to driving such initiatives?
Nathalie: You bet. And, you know, we can reference here the fact that we did do this big transformation from 2020 all the way into 2023, where we had 234 sites, 234 individual sites that were at various levels of maturity too. There was lots of different stuff going on there. We had to merge all of those into 18 sites. So the biggest challenge was not so much the volume of pages, it was the centralization. It meant making decisions about structure, governance, and standards, not just content, on behalf of these 234 entities. So we had to focus on systems rather than fixes and standardized content types and shared components. But at that scale, you don't fix pages, you fix patterns, right? And I think every challenge requires some pretty solid change management. Yeah.
Linh: You know, as we continue to talk about accessibility, this is the whole theme here — accessibility as a strategy. We hear a lot about compliance and there's always more compliance and new deadlines and such. How does your team approach compliance at the University of Ottawa?
Nathalie: So we treat accessibility as a quality standard, not a compliance task. So that means that we've embedded it into how we build content, how we design components, and how we train users. It's part of the workflow, not something that we add at the end. When you approach it that way, it improves the experience for everyone, not just compliance. It's about that one person who wishes to access your content, no matter their limitation. You're working for them. You're doing this for that one person. That's all that matters.
Linh: I love that. And I love that you said it's not after the fact or bolted on at the end. I think there's a misconception that yes, we can think about it after the fact, but it's even more costly when you do that after. Right. And there's also the fact that your experience comes from the strong digital marketing side and web and design side. As they say, shift left — you start at the very forefront of your content lifecycle to make sure that accessibility is considered right at the forefront of the development, not at the end.
Nathalie: Yeah, absolutely. And the whole team's passionate really about — when I think about our UX/UI designer, Adriana and Alan, you know, they have their noses in there all the time making sure, right, there's color contrast, there's all of these bits and pieces that need to be measured and taken care of. And you don't fix color contrast after the fact. Fix it at the design level.
Linh: 100%. Can you share a moment where investing in accessibility created an unexpected strategic advantage or a business benefit?
Nathalie: You know, the one unexpected benefit was the content clarity. When you simplify language, structure content properly and make it accessible, it becomes easier to understand and easier to find. So we saw improvements not just in accessibility score, but in our overall quality and usability. And it just reinforces that accessibility and performance are very closely linked.
Linh: I love that you said that because what we're finding too is, as you say, accessibility requires you to have content quality, structured content, usability, and accuracy, right? And all of that really feeds into actually how the new answer engines operate as well. And so these new answer engines, or AEO — that's how you will help the university show up and have that brand show up within those answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and others. You're spot on about bridging accessibility as your foundation, but as the strategic advantage, it fuels content quality which then fuels AEO, which is the new wave as we're experiencing the shift at the moment. So great. You know, AEO and AI and the future of agentic AI is here. And you mentioned transforming from hours and days to minutes with Siteimprove AI. What does it look like day to day?
Nathalie: Oh, it means in a nutshell, faster decision cycles, but I'll be more precise. So instead of waiting to compile reports or analyze data, the team can quickly identify issues, prioritize actions, and move forward. So it reduces the bottleneck and allows us to operate more efficiently without increasing workload.
It also enables us — and this is something I discovered when I was meeting with my director and one of our strategists, Isabel — we're looking at our data and there was this organic conversation happening along with Siteimprove's AI agent. We were able to query it as we were discussing. So we had access to all this information and were really able to have a productive discussion. And then the bonus is you can share reports so easily with your stakeholders, everything is so easy to navigate that they can then go and have fun and explore as much as they want. But it was really lovely to see how that AI agent becomes just another person on staff who knows our website at the tip of their fingers.
Linh: Yes. So we've just multiplied, right? You've got now access to these agents who can take on all the tasks that you would normally spend a whole lot of time on. And it's also an opportunity to explore what else is possible that we may not have thought of in our day-to-day work, right? And it's amazing to watch all of this unfold. The space is so critical — we talk a lot about AI, but the space of accessibility is so human-centric that we can't forget the human element and the lived experience that we can bring to the table. Can you describe the scope of the Siteimprove initiative? You talked about the 120 users and the training. Maybe share a little bit about that.
Nathalie: You bet. So as you said, Siteimprove has been our favorite tool. It's actually the institutional tool. So yes, it's our favorite, but it's also baked into what we do. We have about 120 users on Siteimprove currently. We have a dedicated tech person that does all things Siteimprove, creates groups for us. We've had to split things up because we have a bilingual ecosystem — and oh, my goodness, I remember the days where I only had to work in English. It's so simple. Everything we do has to be perfectly bilingual here. So we've been able to map out either English, either French, or a full bilingual overview of our sites. And that's thanks to the team that we have.
Another thing that we really appreciate about using the tool is the fact that we have a dedicated representative that we meet every couple of weeks. So we just stay so on top of everything new in Siteimprove. We get opportunities to participate in the AI beta program and others. There's your wonderful alt text checker that we're very excited about. And you're going to be releasing a PDF piece soon, which we're excited about as well. But it takes a big place in our university as a whole. We have about 100 web users, but more Siteimprove users because we have stakeholders that access that information as well.
Linh: Great, great. Thank you for that. And thank you also for the 10-year partnership as you're getting close to a 10-year relationship with Siteimprove. We appreciate and thank you very much for the loyalty.
Nathalie: We are very happy, very, very happy with the platform and the people.
Linh: I want to shift a little bit — as you mentioned at the top of the call, there's so much going on, especially if you've been in tech for 25 years, you've seen so much evolution and transformation. You've been part of our Siteimprove AI beta program. Can you share a little bit about what that experience is like?
Nathalie: Yes, we were very thrilled about being part of that program. My team — they were like kids in a candy store, basically playing with it. Very, very efficient tool, by the way. But in practice, it means that we took tasks that used to take hours, like analyzing content performance or identifying issues, and we reduced them to minutes, basically. And more importantly, it changed how we work. So instead of spending time gathering insights, we spend time acting on them. It shifts the team from analysis to interpretation and decision making. And that's where the value is.
Linh: The other thing too is with the evolution that we've been talking about, and now being part of Siteimprove's AI beta programs, the experience that you're describing seems so game-changing, right? Like we're not putting agents in place for incremental benefits — incremental time savings — but it's more game-changing in how we approach things, as you say, down to minutes. But then you can allocate all that extra time to really focus on what really matters to the organization and to the institution.
We talked a little bit about AEO earlier and how I love that you've bridged accessibility to quality content to AEO. With agentic AI changing how people discover brands and consume content, how are you thinking about AEO at the moment?
Nathalie: We're thinking about it a lot. That's for sure. We're thinking beyond traditional SEO. You know, it's not about ranking so much as answering the question, being the source of the answer. Not to mention all the technical bits and pieces that we can do, like schemas and LLM files and all of these tools that we can tack on to our site to make it more accessible to AI agents, right?
But it means writing more clearly, organizing our content in a way that's easy to interpret, ensuring that our information can be surfaced directly by the AI tools. You know, an interesting note — when we transformed our site in 2021, we asked everybody to phase out their FAQ pages. They were just no longer useful or consulted. And now, in some cases, they've become recommended again. When you think about an FAQ, it's one question, one answer. And that's what your content should be. So even in a regular webpage without it being an FAQ, you want to hone in on your subject. If possible, have one topic per page and one topic per paragraph that answers a specific question. So we have to train our content creators here to shift how they write. And there's a lot involved in getting everybody on board, from the technical to the content creation.
Linh: Absolutely. And I think that accessibility, to your point earlier, enables you to do that to begin with. Having that as a foundation to have that structured content will serve you well in the AI engine world.
What are some of the results from applying a platform like Siteimprove to your overall accessibility strategy?
Nathalie: Well, we wouldn't do without it. Siteimprove is our day-to-day tool. Everything that we do, we measure, period, right? So being able to leverage Siteimprove's new tools — and I'll talk about the policies piece because the policies that you can create in Siteimprove are magic. They really are. They can help you find any content on your site. Siteimprove is there in our day-to-day and informing how we work on our site and what actions we do. And it also helps us communicate with the community because we have eyes on all 18 sites.
So our poor partners — I feel for them sometimes — because they get broken link reports. Broken links affect accessibility, even if you have a redirect on it. So we have to tell people, put the real link, remove the redirect. People tend to receive little notes from us monthly with reports to correct. But we also do a check on the hierarchy. We'll knock on somebody's door if they've got H1 jumping to H3, right? It doesn't inform the hierarchy properly. You want heading one, heading two, and heading three in all instances, never the opposite. So we've really leveraged Siteimprove to look at accessibility, quality assurance, and SEO.
Linh: Love it. Because really, you're speaking to not only accessibility and meeting the compliance piece, but you're also tackling the performance piece as well. So you're ensuring compliance and performance all at the same time within the same platform, which is great to hear. Where do you see accessibility heading with the world of AI, and what do you think of the future of accessibility?
Nathalie: I think AI will likely feel like a gift to many people who have needs around accessible content or any accessibility issues really. But also I think AI and accessibility will become more connected. Well-structured, accessible content is easier for AI to understand and use. And at the same time, AI can help us identify accessibility issues and support content creation. So the opportunities to use AI to reinforce accessibility are real — but very importantly, not to replace the human judgment behind it. There needs to always be the human in mind. It's about the human anyways. Accessibility is not about compliance. It's not about a potential fine if you don't follow WCAG regulations. It's about, as I said earlier, that one human who needs and has the right to access your content.
Linh: Yes. Thank you for bringing the human aspect to this conversation as well, because it is. And while we're releasing a lot of these agents, you still need the human in the loop that oversees some of these — unless it's such a mundane task that you just need to automate it and build trust with that agent. But absolutely, it's such a human-centric effort, and I think the human in accessibility will always, always be there.
What are your thoughts on vibe coding, given that it's becoming such a big deal and websites are going to be built faster and easier? How does that impact accessibility in your opinion?
Nathalie: You know, I want to say I'm a little bit concerned, but at the same time, AI is so powerful that they probably get it down perfectly, right? The thing is, in an institution like ours, you can only have AI do so much for you. It's such a complex environment that we can't just ask AI to build some code and copy paste it into a platform and done like dinner. The human aspect has to stay. We need our web developer to massage the code, to verify. But in our case, I see it more as an assistant validating. I don't see it taking the jobs of any of our developers anytime soon, that's for sure.
Linh: Right. And definitely an opportunity, as you say. With the team and the accessibility expertise that you're describing, it's definitely an opportunity to make sure that accessibility is baked into vibe coding so that you don't inadvertently create more accessibility issues in the future than we're seeing today. And that's a shame because once you code something, having to go back is just not ideal, right? You want to identify that issue with color contrast at the mock-up level, not at the release level. When you're releasing, it's like, oh, we've got all these accessibility issues now. Let's go back, right?
Nathalie: Right. You've got to have the right team in place with the right expertise to ensure that throughout the whole process, you are thinking about accessibility.
Linh: What advice would you give a digital leader in other institutions who want to get started with this kind of transformation? I'm speaking of transformations not just around accessibility as its own thing, but with agents and AI. Where should they begin, or what advice would you give them?
Nathalie: Start with clarity. Try to get your KPIs. What are you trying to achieve? It's so easy to dive into an AI tool and get content overwhelmed so easily. I think that establishing basic governance and focusing on consistency will really help you navigate through these ever-ongoing changes. And educate yourselves. I mean, it's so hard to keep up. Surround yourself with people — me, I'm coming close to the end of my career, so I'm surrounded by a team who are closer to the realities of today. They might be fresh out of school and they bring all of this wealth of knowledge that I just haven't been able to tap into out of lack of time. So I think it's very important to just make time to explore, and be realistic also about what can be achieved in relation to the use of these AI agents. They don't yet replace the human.
Linh: For the listeners on this call, what's one thing they should take away from our conversation?
Nathalie: I think the one thing they should take away is that success doesn't come from doing more. It comes from doing things consistently and intentionally. And if you build the right systems, the results will follow. And lastly — and I think I'm repeating myself, but I do that — accessibility in all of its forms is so very important. It's a very, very important thing to take care of.
Linh: I can't be more passionate about it either, I think.
My final question for you is, if you were to give your 20-year-old self some leadership advice, what would it be?
Nathalie: Great question. There's a lot of things I would tell my 20-year-old self, but we'll keep it business. I think that having been introduced to marketing in an unconventional way — I was thrown in, you know. I was sitting in an office one day opening envelopes and this fella said, "Hey, we're starting a marketing department and you're coming with me." I just got thrown into the mix and I had no background at all whatsoever. But intuition — I found that my intuition was there to help me navigate. And I didn't always trust it. It's easy to not trust it when you don't have that bachelor's degree. I was in my early 20s just doing this job and all of a sudden it's this big job. And I would say, Nathalie, follow your intuition. It'll take you there. You've got this. Marketing can be a gift. It's not just learned.
Linh: That concludes this podcast episode of the Accessible Brand. Thank you listeners for joining us. If this episode inspired you, help us share the stories and subscribe to stay tuned for the next episode. For more information about this podcast series, please visit siteimprove.com/podcast. Again, my name is Linh Ho, your host. Thank you for joining me.