background graphical element
CASE STUDY: Eli Lilly

Driving Global Accessibility at Scale: Eli Lilly Partners with Mobility Mojo

In pursuit of global accessibility, Lilly partnered with Mobility Mojo to streamline and scale their building assessments worldwide. With Mobility Mojo’s intuitive platform, Lilly successfully assessed 35 global locations, gaining detailed insights to make accessibility improvements. As a result, the company has enhanced workplace inclusivity, benefiting all employees and furthering the goal of embedding accessibility deeply into its corporate culture.
Lilly_idHSbkfxW3_1
Industry

Pharmaceutical 

Employees

50 000+

Customers

58 000 000+

Countries

105+

Introducing Eli Lilly and Company

For more than 145 years, Lilly has been creating medicines that make life better. Founded in 1876 by pharmaceutical chemist and Union Army veteran Colonel Eli Lilly, the company set out to create high-quality medicines people could trust in an era dominated by unreliable elixirs peddled by questionable characters. 

Colonel Lilly’s insistence on quality became the foundation of the company's lasting success. For decades, generations of employees have lived by his charge to “Take what you find here and make it better and better.” This commitment has driven many medical breakthroughs, including mass production of insulin and the polio vaccine.

Building on this legacy, today Lilly continues to leverage biotechnology, chemistry, and genetic medicine to address significant global health challenges, including diabetes and obesity, cancer, neuroscience and immunological conditions. Employing nearly 50,000 people worldwide, the company operates in 105 countries, manufacturing medicines relied upon by over 58 million people around the world.

Challenge: Building a consistent approach to global accessibility

Eanble Logo

In 2020, Lilly launched Access Lilly, a global accessibility program designed to cultivate a disability-confident culture and barrier-free environment across its operations worldwide. Access Lilly grew out of EnAble, an employee resource group founded a decade ago to support and empower employees with disabilities.

“After the first three years, we had good momentum. We’d raised awareness companywide, grown membership globally, and by 2018 we wanted to turn that awareness into action.”
Darren Rowan

Global Digital Accessibility Leader and co-founder of EnAble at Lilly

Darren secured a meeting with the Executive President of Human Resources, and proposed creating a global disability strategy for the company, using the Business Disability Forum’s Global Business Disability Framework as a guide. As this was new to Lilly and the framework covered multiple aspects, Darren was asked to state the one thing the company should focus on.

“I said ‘accessibility’, knowing it was one word but many things,” explains Darren. Over the next year, he developed a strategic programme consisting of six workstreams.

For the facilities workstream, the initial goal was to evaluate accessibility and identify improvements across the company’s locations globally, starting with company-owned buildings. Recognising consistency was key, the team first needed a standardised evaluation approach.

They created an internal accessibility checklist based on the Business Disability Forum’s guidance and conversations with other companies about their accessibility practices. Because accessibility standards vary by location, they sought external expertise to help identify standards that exceeded local regulatory requirements. However, the internal checklist presented some challenges. First, evolving standards meant someone needed to regularly update the checklist to ensure consistency. Second, although employees valued accessibility, assessments added extra tasks to their already full workloads.

To complement the checklist, the team collaborated with external experts to develop an inclusive design toolkit. This toolkit helped identify barriers and create a best-in-class approach for enhancing accessibility and overall environmental experiences. It was excellent for guiding conversations with architects during new builds and major renovations. But it wasn’t a suitable tool for team members throughout the world assessing existing buildings.

Ultimately, for accessibility improvements to sustainably scale across the company, the assessment process needed to be as straightforward and streamlined as possible.

Solution: Scaling accessibility with an intuitive assessment tool

In 2024, Lilly partnered with Mobility Mojo to scale accessibility assessments globally.

“We had ambitious goals, but working across a global environment means navigating different time zones, cultures, site objectives and levels of accessibility knowledge,” explains Raul Lopez, Senior Director of European Facilities Management at Lilly, who oversaw the global accessibility assessments. “We needed a global solution that allowed us to move quickly and cost-effectively.”

Mobility Mojo’s team collaborated closely with Lilly, providing strong customer support from the start, enabling a rapid rollout across sites worldwide.

“Senior leadership drove this initiative from the top down,” says Raul. “They set clear expectations with HR and Facilities departments and emphasised the importance of this work to country managers. Mobility Mojo’s intuitive interface made it as easy as possible for sites to complete their assessments.”

Mobility Mojo’s technical assistance team supported individual sites with hurdles they encountered, such as converting measurement units and submitting detailed photographs.

With Mobility Mojo, Eli Lilly successfully assessed 35 locations of varying sizes—from smaller sites of just two floors to larger locations comprising multiple buildings. The company’s largest site, the Indianapolis headquarters, encompasses four sections spanning one square mile. Regardless of site size, Mobility Mojo’s tool consistently delivered.

Elil Lilly headquarters

Results: A more accessible workplace for everyone

Armed with Mobility Mojo’s accessibility reports, Lilly’s site leads now have detailed information on what improvements each building needs. The result? Approximately 95 percent of Lilly’s buildings are being made more accessible.

Each site is creating its own improvement plan. Towards the end of 2025, the team will perform another round of global assessments to verify the effectiveness of these plans and ensure they align with evolving standards.

By 2027, all fully-owned Lilly buildings aim to meet a higher standard of accessibility that goes beyond compliance. The Indianapolis headquarters, home to more than 12,000 employees, has already implemented many improvements, generating positive feedback and benefits for everyone.

With such a strong commitment to inclusion and accessibility deeply embedded in the company’s ethos, it’s clear why Lilly consistently receives recognition for workplace excellence, employer innovation and ethics.

“It’s been very rewarding leading this work. Accessibility benefits everyone, but it especially affects employees with disabilities, who often have to navigate unnecessarily difficult environments. For me, seeing the tangible difference it makes for all employees shows that accessibility isn’t just about supporting particular employees—it makes the workplace better for everyone.”
Raul Lopez

Senior Director of European Facilities Management at Lilly

Check out our Blog:

See all posts
Workplace

3 min read

Inclusion / Accessibility Compliance / Accessibility Standards / Inclusive Workplace
The ROI of inclusive workplaces

Most people recognise the social benefits of accessibility. When the world is open and welcoming to...

21-10-25
A man working at a desk. Beside him is a cane and a guide dog.
background graphical element
Contact us

Capture, track, improve, promote and compare accessibility

Support sustainable development, DE&I, employee retention, financial, ESG and service improvement goals with Mobility Mojo. 

Contact us today to see how we can support your journey. 

Get in touch Book a demo