Salesforce

The Brief

Edith Cowan University’s Access and Inclusion team supports students with disabilities by creating Learning Access Plans (LAPs)—personalized strategies to help them thrive academically. Previously, this was a clunky and manual process, requiring extensive back-and-forth between students, the Access and Inclusion team, and lecturers.

The university engaged Salesforce to streamline the process as part of a larger initiative to move all student services to the Salesforce platform.

The goal was to design a seamless, secure, and accessible digital experience that:

• Allows the Access and Inclusion team to create and manage Learning Access Plans within Salesforce.

• Enables students to submit an appointment form, review and accept plans online.

• Automatically shares finalized plans with lecturers to ensure timely implementation.

• Uses Salesforce out-of-the-box components where possible to reduce cost and complexity, while meeting strict data security and accessibility standards.

Phase 1: Research

I began with discovery workshops to deeply understand the needs of all stakeholders:

• Access and Inclusion staff: to map their existing paper-based workflow and identify pain points.

• Students with disabilities: to understand accessibility requirements, including screen reader compatibility, clear navigation, and mobile usability.

• Lecturers and administrators: to capture requirements for receiving and actioning Learning Access Plans.

Key insights:

• Staff needed a centralized view of student cases and communication history.

• Students valued clarity and privacy, requiring a simple, guided acceptance flow.

• Accessibility compliance (WCAG AA) was critical, particularly for screen reader users.

• The solution had to leverage Salesforce Lightning components, but certain user interactions demanded configured UI patterns for optimal usability.

Phase 2: Design

Working within Salesforce’s Lightning Design System, I crafted a solution that balanced native components:

• User flows & wireframes: Defined end-to-end journeys for staff, students, and lecturers, ensuring seamless transitions between creation, approval, and distribution.

• Component strategy: Used out-of-the-box components (record pages, list views, forms) for core functionality while introducing configured components where Salesforce defaults didn’t meet workflow needs.

• Visual design: Maintained ECU’s brand within Salesforce constraints, ensuring consistent typography, colors, and accessible contrast ratios.

• Security and privacy: Incorporated secure role-based access to protect sensitive student medical information.

I collaborated closely with Salesforce developers to validate feasibility and ensure designs aligned with platform capabilities. As the ask was to use out of the box as much as possible, we deemed it appropriate to go straight to prototyping designs.

New appointment form and Learning Access Plan (LAP) in the student portal

Phase 3: Testing

To ensure a smooth transition, I planned and implemented a multi-phase testing strategy:

• Prototype testing with Access and Inclusion staff to validate workflows and reduce training needs.

• Accessibility testing with students using assistive technologies to confirm WCAG compliance.

• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with university administrators to validate data security, permissions, and end-to-end integrations.

Feedback from testing helped refine form layouts, improve mobile responsiveness, and enhance error handling to support users of all abilities.

Outcome

The new Salesforce-based Learning Access Plan transformed a slow process into a secure, digital workflow, enabling:

• Faster creation and approval of Learning Access Plans.

• Greater transparency and ease of communication between students, staff, and lecturers.

• A scalable foundation for future Salesforce-driven student services at Edith Cowan University.