How do teams turn accessibility from individual effort into system wide practice? Chris talks with Anna Thielke, founder and CEO of Mantis and Company, to find out. They explore why representation on system teams leads to better standards, how designing for the edges strengthens products for everyone, and what it takes for accessibility work to spread across large organizations in a sustainable way. Anna also shares how lived experience shapes her perspective and why accessibility becomes more effective when teams view it as shared responsibility rather than a late stage requirement.
Key Takeaways
- Design systems provide the structure needed to scale accessibility across teams.
- Representation on system teams shapes the standards that reach every product.
- Designing for the edges leads to more inclusive and resilient experiences.
Guest
Anna Thielke is an entrepreneur and systems thinker who leads Mantis & Co., a disability-owned accessibility and inclusive design agency. Drawing on 15+ years of experience and her background as a blind, neurodivergent leader, she helps teams build products and cultures that work for everyone. Previously Director of Inclusive Design at CVS Health, Anna is known for blending creativity, honesty, and practicality to move organizations from intention to action.
Transcript
Chris Strahl [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Before we get into today's conversation, I wanted to share a quick update about the show. After more than five years of the Design Systems podcast, we're evolving. Our work at Knapsack and the conversations happening across the industry have grown far beyond design systems, and the podcast needs to grow with them. Starting in January 2026, the show is going to continue, but it's going to have a new name, the Patterns Podcast. I'll still be the host, we'll still continue to feature the kinds of conversations and guests you're used to hearing from, but the focus is going to broaden to include the full digital product life cycle, how teams design, build, and deliver modern digital products. If you're subscribed here, there's nothing you need to do. The feed will update automatically, and the first Patterns episode will arrive right in your podcast app.
Thank you for being a part of the community and for helping shape the conversations we've had on the dsp. And I can't wait to share what's next.
Chris Strahl [00:00:47]:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Design Systems Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Strahl. Today I'm here with Anna Thielke. Anna is at Mantis and Company. It's a firm that specializes in accessibility. I actually first met Anna when she was working at cvs. So, hey, why don't you say hey and introduce yourself?
Anna Thielke [00:01:03]:
Hey, everyone. I'm Anna Thielke, as Chris mentioned, founder and CEO of Mantis and Company. We're an inclusive design and accessibility agency, really focusing on the intersection of healthcare access and design. It's our sweet spot, and so we do a lot of work with design systems.
Chris Strahl [00:01:21]:
Anna, give me a sense of your history and your background and why this topic matters enough to you that you decided to start a whole company based around it.
Anna Thielke [00:01:31]:
Yeah, so I'll start with some of my background first. So I have a background in fine arts, drawing, illustration. Really fun stuff, kind of turned into design and advertising. Did a little stint with Crispin, Porter and Boguski. Did a lot of work with illustration and print, and then into digital and some different interaction design and things, and eventually into usability. I then started losing my vision, and so that was a process that started about 11 years ago. So I now have low vision. If we meet in person, you notice that because, well, quite frankly, I can't see things sometimes.
Anna Thielke [00:02:06]:
But also I use a white cane. And so the conversation around access and design has just been super close to my heart. And so this is what I do.
Chris Strahl [00:02:14]:
Yeah, I think that's an incredible story. The idea that, you know, you became passionate about something that you were experiencing personally and decided to make a career pathway out of it.
Anna Thielke [00:02:23]:
Yeah, it's a great space, good people, good community, and I mean, you just really can't go wrong. And so design systems then obviously makes a lot of sense too, in terms of impact. So one of the big places we focus when we're doing consulting with folks.
Chris Strahl [00:02:36]:
Yeah. So thinking about that in particular, there's a lot of importance placed on how we approach accessibility systematically across an organization. So you've worked at a lot of big companies. When you think about those really big companies, they have dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of applications. There's dozens and hundreds and thousands of people on those teams, not all of which have that presence around an accessibility need. And a design system is there to address a lot of the accessibility needs, sort of in this very systematic capacity. And when we think about how that works, I'm curious your take on what a design system's role is in making sure that not just that single app's experience is accessible or that single team cares about accessibility, but the organization cares.
Anna Thielke [00:03:29]:
About working across different design systems and large systems in particular. What I've noticed is, first of all, it's a lot easier to get buy in around a design system. Like already, most organizations have funded their design systems into varying degrees. But to come alongside that and say, hey, guess what, this is the place to start for scaling your accessibility. It's an easy sell for the most part to say, we've got a nice little place here, you're already creating standards, why not come alongside and do this for accessibility? Given that though, too, there's some caveat that's required there. Just in all we can do with the love from all of our hearts about accessibility for our components and documentation and everything. But in the implementation phases, it still needs some care to really see it through to production. So we do the good work to make sure that our components are delivering what they can, but there's still work to be done on top of that.
Chris Strahl [00:04:24]:
Yeah. So give me an idea about how this plays out inside of a design system that you've worked on. So there's obvious things like WCAG standards, where you're thinking about things like color contrast, there's less obvious things, which is things like how does the cognitive load or animation or something like that affect an experience? So when you think about maybe those two kind of like polar ends of a spectrum, how does a system really support creating the right environment for accessibility as an interest or a Topic area to thrive.
Anna Thielke [00:05:00]:
Actually, I think you said a great word with the word environment. A lot of times the folks who are in the design system doing that work are your best advocates. And so they're the people who are already sort of pre seasoned, usually further along in their journey as designers or engineers, ready to advocate for accessibility and sort of already doing that out of the box. So what I often find is that within design system teams you have a lot of momentum already. So that's really nice and that spreads. One thing you'll hear me say a lot is I think that, you know, design organizations and designers are out of the box, in a really great position to lead accessibility because of their ability to storytell. And design systems often get a lot of speaking time with executives. So it's great to just have that nice ecosystem in terms of a spectrum from like WCAG and looking at things, you know, as compliance versus the thing we'd like to do, which is often translated as what we have to do, must do versus what we should or could do.
Anna Thielke [00:06:01]:
That's really important to articulate. There are times when you need to go into that space of supporting what must be done and you need to really crisp, clear language about what must be done to meet that requirement. And then there are times when you can have a little space to breathe and really find those moments of good collaboration and doing the right thing. It's just a balance like everything else.
Chris Strahl [00:06:23]:
So you brought up the idea that systems help you scale or they spread is I think what you said. And so when it comes to that idea of scale and spread, there's a lot of power there and a lot of responsibility. If you think about how an organization's systems affect hundreds or dozens or thousands of products, you have this impact that is really far reaching. There's kind of two areas of exploration here I'd like to dig into a little bit. First, it seems to me like it matters a lot who is on that systems team that is advocating for accessibility because these decisions go to so many different places. It also seems like as standards evolve or change or a company thinks differently about this particular space, this is potentially the only way you could actually scale that change or that thinking across the organization. Tell me a little bit about how you think about who's on the team and how it scales.
Anna Thielke [00:07:22]:
Well, like anything that scales, I mean, we've got a nice opportunity to talk about scale with AI. When you look at sort of ethics and guardrails with AI, you know, one of the things that is kind of like, whoa, what's happening there is, because it moves so quickly, it scales so quickly. And part of that is making sure that what is scaling is intentional and has the care baked into it. So when we talk about who is involved in sort of feeding that initial seed that scales across any system, we probably want to talk about representation. Like, the same folks who might benefit from, from receiving a good accessible experience might be considered to be good candidates for the team. What I'm saying in particular is disabled folks and having that representation there is really great.
Chris Strahl [00:08:07]:
And so when you think about that scaling, then what happens when an organization adopts a new standard or some standard shifts for them? Because when I think about this from like a purely organizational motivation standpoint, if I'm saying, hey, look, I've got all these great people that are working on this great set of standards and this application of those things to this central system, what happens when the next standard comes along or what happens when we end up with a need on our side to implement? How is that different than, say, just needing a new button or just needing a new variation of a component? And, you know, how does an organization, or how should an organization think about that change?
Anna Thielke [00:08:51]:
What you're getting into here is one of the reasons why you have accessibility. Folks doing accessibility work. Sometimes when you develop a point of view, having the ability to have dedicated support for accessibility in baking consideration from beginning to end, and then ultimately rolling that out, that's really important. Let's take the example of like an Update from WCAG 2.1 to 2.2. If you have dedicated accessibility support, most likely you've got folks out there sort of future proofing and thinking about, like, hey, we've got wind of these things that are coming down the line. We've probably reviewed the actual guidelines themselves, we've probably given commentary on them, and we've thought about, like, how they might integrate into the system. So some of that is just the future casting of that whole thing, but I think it's relatively akin to other changes. The same thing that you'd want to do when you update any other piece of your design system.
Anna Thielke [00:09:46]:
It should follow a very similar sort of workflow in terms of documentation, communication, 75% of the work, it seems to be like the communication and getting it into the hands of people in awareness when you make a change, like, nobody knows that change is there unless you're really out there, like, advocating for that change and letting folks know how to implement it or use it.
Chris Strahl [00:10:06]:
That's an interesting point. And I want to just look A little deeper there for a second. I have heard from various folks around the industry is that good accessibility practices should feel invisible to the people that are implementing them. That they shouldn't have to feel like it's this big extra thing or this big extra burden on the way that they're working. At the same time, I see the point you just made, right? Hey, if there's a change and nobody knows about it, how does anybody know to implement the change? And what are the impacts of that change or the intentions behind that change? And I kind of want to address that seeming conflict for a second because if we are talking about a world where people don't think about accessibility just because it's the way that we build and it's the right way to build, and everybody kind of knows that versus this idea of wanting to make it this really highly visible thing that has a deep understanding of the implications behind it and why we're doing this work. Help me understand, is that a culture thing? Is that a technology thing? Is that like something that's shifting in the market? What do you see that sort of conflict as?
Anna Thielke [00:11:12]:
I think there are a whole bunch of factors there and every single one that you mentioned has a place in different organizations and it just depends. Depends on the organization. To be honest, looking at a few different organizations that I've worked with in their design system work, how do you know, like if you're a designer who doesn't currently support or know about or understand how screen readers work, how do you not have any sort of disruption to your work in order to learn that? To me, it does seem that it requires some disruption and some amount of friction in order to make that a refined process. So any new thing that you learn is going to create a little bit of lag in terms of your ability to deliver. And the more comfortable you get with that, the more cozy you get. Like delivering accessibility in terms of screen reader use, keyboard navigation, all of that, the easier it's going to be. So at the end of the day, you're right. I think that statement still stands, that accessibility is still fantastic.
Anna Thielke [00:12:09]:
It should feel really smooth, but it does take a level of maturity and pain probably, or a little friction to get there.
Chris Strahl [00:12:16]:
Hey everyone, I'd like to take a quick break and tell you about Knapsack's leadership Summits. Every month we host an exclusive in person event in different cities all around the country, bringing together design, engineering and product leaders. These summits are all about sharing our learning with tailored discussions to address the challenges you're Facing the best part, it's totally free. Head over to Knapsack Cloud events to find an upcoming summit near you and apply to join us. We'd love to see you there.
Chris Strahl [00:12:43]:
Yeah. So that pain and that friction, I think, is a really interesting topic, and I'm sure you're probably sick of defending this conversation, right? But the idea of, like, why should organizations bear that pain and that cost, right? What is it about accessibility that makes it not just about addressing some small portion of the market, but also something that organizations should care about because there's obvious risks, right? Like, people can get sued for accessibility problems. There is the how do I clear a risk hurdle side, but the other side of it is, like, how do I just have good practice that involves the broadest audience possible? And like I said, I'm sure you're sick of that take, but I want to hear from you. Why should an organization invest in this?
Anna Thielke [00:13:25]:
There are a couple things. One, I guess if you look at the overall demographics of who we're talking about, who we're serving, you're talking about 1 in 4, 1 in 5 adults in the US who have disabilities.
Chris Strahl [00:13:36]:
And.
Anna Thielke [00:13:37]:
And if you extrapolate beyond that number, how many folks have macular degeneration who don't identify as being disabled and will not check the box of somebody who is disabled, yet greatly needs and benefits from accessibility, then we get into more like 50% or 40%. I mean, you really start to see those numbers extrapolate. And so who's your target? I guess if you're a healthcare company, like, those things are really, really core. That's a huge number of people. It gets even higher than that by the time you get into something like Medicare and Medicaid services. So it's large. So if you're looking at product market fit and you're wondering who you're targeting, if you're doing anything that's medical devices, health care, pharmaceuticals, that kind of stuff, it's pretty baseline. Like, that has to happen in order for you to actually even realize your full revenue potential.
Anna Thielke [00:14:26]:
So the business case is there. I love helping build that for people because there is an intersection and there is an overlap of business case plus doing the right thing.
Chris Strahl [00:14:37]:
Yeah, definitely. And you can think about, like, somebody like my grandmother who had rheumatoid arthritis, like, she couldn't use a keyboard. And so the idea of, like, hey, look, you know, her eyes were fine, her cognitive capabilities were fine, but she just couldn't type. And that as somebody that needed medical assistance, that's a Big barrier.
Anna Thielke [00:14:57]:
That's huge.
Chris Strahl [00:14:57]:
So yeah, it's one of those things that I think that we understate just how big of a need this is. And I know that we have a lot of things that are being done to generate awareness of this. But the idea of, hey, we're designing for this mean experience where that mean experience is this somehow like fundamental human average of what's there. And I think that we would do better if we thought about what is the highest level needs and to think about how far away or how far removed we want to design from that. That's a very different mentality than I think a lot of organizations take.
Anna Thielke [00:15:33]:
Yeah. And you know, just to put some positivity around that a little bit. But like design folks, like we all design for ourselves. Right. Like if I'm going to start a design, I'm certainly thinking about my own self and my own needs. So it's a human pattern, it's natural and to kind of step outside of that. That's the place where we have craft and practice and all of the different mechanisms and tools that we can use to be designers and execute design. So the thing with designers and when I'm working with design teams, everybody gets so downtrodden sometimes by accessibility.
Anna Thielke [00:16:05]:
And I think in the past there's been relationship between design and accessibility that doesn't always feel supportive. And I really want to sort of present a path that is supportive to say we can be our best design selves by truly serving folks through our design. So I believe it's possible. That's just me. A little bit too much optimism there probably.
Chris Strahl [00:16:26]:
But no, I love it. Where has this really worked for you? I'm curious because you've been at a lot of places in a lot of different organizations, where has it felt right?
Anna Thielke [00:16:34]:
I would say CVS Health, we certainly had some great things going there. And you know, I was with the design system from the very beginning until several different rounds and permutations later and even emerge with Aetna. So that was its own challenge in supporting both brands design systems. I think it's worked pretty well there. But if anything else, these are all like learning opportunities. And at the end of the day, were there challenges? Absolutely. Like we had so many challenges and it's really about like, do you have the team that is resilient enough and has the ability to work through these things that has the skill and the sort of level headedness to keep going? Because that's what it's going to take. It's not an easy solution.
Anna Thielke [00:17:16]:
By any means.
Chris Strahl [00:17:17]:
I love the way you speak so enthusiastically about the idea of, hey, you got a bunch of great people going to go try to solve a problem collectively. And I think that that sense of, gosh, that shared problems face and that camaraderie around solving it, I mean, building digital products is really, really hard. And because it's really, really hard, there's all sorts of challenges that are very basic to digital technology. Just like, how do you get something to show up inside of a web browser so somewhere on a different continent? But then there's all these other challenges of like, who's looking at that content and in that sense of what can you control and what you can't control, who's looking at it is very hard to control. And so when you think about that who's looking at it problem and how are they experiencing the thing you create? I do think that takes like this really deeply empathetic worldview that you talked a little bit about, like the, the selfishness of designing for yourself and then the craft of being empathetic and designing for other people. And I guess a lot of the enthusiasm that I sense from you is that enthusiasm for that craft, that idea of like, hey, we have to go be these really empathetic, interesting people and try to think of all these use cases together around things that we can't necessarily control.
Anna Thielke [00:18:31]:
I think that sounds about right. And one of the things that I find so completely enjoyable about the work and the complexity of design systems is that, you know, when you really track and map all of the different sort of stakeholder inputs, all of the different complexities, the layers, the nuance, how things are impacted when you make a change, all of these different things, they require so much care that at the end of the day, it requires a really interesting and juicy problem solving set. So every day is kind of like a new challenge. And when you have humans involved, even more so when you have, you know, ego involved maybe, or stakeholders, any sort of friction like that plays into this whole challenge and it's a big ball that just needs to be unraveled a little bit and it's a fun space.
Chris Strahl [00:19:18]:
Out of curiosity, have you ever had somebody in an organization and you don't need to name names or anything like that, been like, no, we're not doing that. From an accessibility standpoint?
Anna Thielke [00:19:26]:
Yes, absolutely. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Huh.
Chris Strahl [00:19:28]:
What was the reason?
Anna Thielke [00:19:30]:
It could be all kinds of different reasons. The most common one was probably we don't have time to do that. We don't have time to Go back and do that. So it wasn't done in the place. And even if it wasn't quite done right, like we may not be able to do it now. And I understand that actually it's a business case. Right. There's a business requirement that says we need to get this thing out the door and then if we have to do a fast follow, that's what we have to do.
Anna Thielke [00:19:53]:
Do I love that conversation. No, it doesn't make people feel good about the thing that they're showing up to do for their work all the time. But I do understand it.
Chris Strahl [00:20:01]:
Gotcha. And in that understanding, when we think about how design systems can really help with that, I think that oftentimes when people are saying, hey, it's taking too long or it's going to be too hard or too cumbersome to make a change, being able to introduce that change systematically can be a way that that becomes much, much easier and much lower cost
Anna Thielke [00:20:24]:
Yeah. So I would say that was one of the big successes at CVS Health was the ability to make change across many different instances fast for accessibility. We were able to measure that in some cases and present that as a huge win for accessibility.
Chris Strahl [00:20:43]:
So this wouldn't be a podcast about tech without talking about AI at some level. When you think about the macro trends with AI and how AI is changing the way we think about making product, how does accessibility factor in good or bad in the AI conversation?
Anna Thielke [00:21:01]:
Well, first I can start with, as somebody who really has a ruthless prioritization more or less for accessibility, I think AI is going to be in a good direction. It's a general technology, it's affecting all parts of our lives and accessibility is no different. So I think there's going to be a huge change in the ability to deliver accessible experiences with AI in many different sorts of ways. So I'm hopeful and I know that currently even like the implementation of computer vision and other technologies hugely beneficial to the entire conversation, you're able to do things you weren't able to do before. And so I think there is going to be some more automation coming and it's not a surprise to anyone. And at some point you're not going to need the day to day of accessibility support because of that. Is it there yet? Not even close. It has a long way to go.
Chris Strahl [00:21:55]:
Yeah. It is interesting, right? There used to always be this sort of tension between the idea of how do you design an accessible experience and how do you do things like device detection and stuff like that that allows you to understand how people with an accessibility need are using local technologies to their endpoint to have a better accessible experience. Now, like that tension is kind of been ever present, but there's also this idea now about like, hey, with AI inside of it, how much of it is AI checking our work making accessibility changes in the applications that we're creating versus how much of it is interpreting those applications in a way that can be more accessible to the consumer? And I think that is like this awesome frontier that is opening up really, really rapidly.
Anna Thielke [00:22:45]:
Yeah, I definitely agree. There are missing pieces to this. Right. Like there's a large number of people who are very against, kind of like automation and what that does for people. Personally, I am okay with automation. I would propose like a new path for us to forge that could maybe create some more meaningful work. If some of these things that we have to do on repeat over and over and over again are automated, I'm okay with that. If the end result is accessibility, I'm good.
Anna Thielke [00:23:12]:
If we need to find new paths, and this is going super macro. If we need to find new paths that are no longer accessibility in the form that it takes today, let's do that. I'm good with it.
Chris Strahl [00:23:24]:
Yeah, I don't think that we've invented everything possible to invent to go solve this problem for certain. And I think that to your point, people need to be open minded, I guess, about what that future holds.
Anna Thielke [00:23:34]:
I understand why people may be resistant and I think some of it's just fear of what that might be or fear of, you know, having jobs replaced and those kind of things. And that's completely valid and understandable. But I do think with some sort of collective creation, we can talk about like what that next thing might be and help that move along. Because at the end of the day, if, you know, I, like I said, I have low vision if I'm using a product and it just works. And part of that was due to automation from AI or assistance from AI. Like I'm still okay with that. If I can access healthcare in a better way as a disabled person, at the end of the day, I think I'm for it.
Chris Strahl [00:24:10]:
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. This has been a great conversation. Everybody check out Manus. We're going to send a link in the show notes. Likewise, if you're interested in coming and checking out more of these kind of conversations, go to Knapsack.cloud/patterns. We have events in major cities all over the country where we have conversations just like this in small groups. Thanks everybody. For taking a moment to listen to the show.
Chris Strahl [00:24:31]:
Have a great day everyone. Hey everyone, thanks for listening to the Design Systems Podcast. If you want to get in touch with the show, ask questions or tell us what you think, you can Find us on LinkedIn using the link in the show notes as a quick reminder before you go. The Design Systems Podcast is evolving into the Patterns Podcast in January 2026. If you're subscribed here, nothing changes, the feed will update automatically. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.