Accessibility Is a Design Opportunity for UX Designers – Not a Roadblock

“Accessibility is inherently a part of experience design and experience design cannot exist without accessibility at its core,” says Selina Kendall, associate director of experience design and accessibility lead at VMLY&R. “The entire point of user experience, its evolution into experience design, and whatever it may be called next, leans upon the concept of keeping all users in mind. This core tenant naturally lends itself to accessibility, as accessibility in our view is the ability to access, no matter who you are or how you experience the world.”

If the craft of user experience design (UX) is all about creating products and services that are easy and meaningful to navigate for users and covers all aspects of all user’s interaction with it, then accessibility – ensuring that the needs of people with disabilities are taken into account – would seem to be an integral element of UX. 

The reality, though is somewhat mixed. High-profile, award-winning creative campaigns like Samsung’s ‘Good Vibes’ in India and ‘Unfear AI’ in Spain or ‘Degree Inclusive’ from Unilever and Wunderman Thompson have certainly raised the profile of accessible design as a concept in the advertising, marketing and design worlds. However, the normalisation of accessibility as a core part of day-to-day UX design is still a work in progress. 

“Considering that the American Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 when the internet was just getting started, the current focus on inclusion seems woefully late,” says Craig Dobie, founding creative director at Applied Design. “If an accessibility-forward approach had been baked into our digital lives from the start, the world would be a fairer, more equitable, and more enjoyable place today. We are playing catch-up on what could have been.”

“Yes, we are making positive changes towards inclusivity, but progress remains slow,” agrees Kanna Kawakita, senior experience designer, Digitas Japan. “I believe that one of the reasons for the slow progress in accessibility is the rarity of including individuals with disabilities when setting targets or defining personas in business, unless the service specifically caters to people with disabilities.”

In the UK, the Royal National Institute for the Blind is an example of an organisation that is focused on an area of disability and that has embraced accessible design wholeheartedly. Together with their agency The&Partnership, they’ve been busy trying to improve experiences from gaming to taking pregnancy tests. It’s up to other organisations and companies that do not specifically focus on improving the lot of people with disabilities to learn from what the RNIB has done. Pushing accessibility up the design agenda has become an important mission for them, say creatives Adam Jackson and Ted Price at The&Partnership who led the recent ‘Design for Every Gamer’ campaign, which shared resources and tools for games developers.

 “Our clients at RNIB have a mantra: ‘Accessibility should be the horse not the cart’. It is usually an afterthought of the design process and never baked in at inception. It should be the thing driving the process to design for everyone, something RNIB has been striving for over the past few years.”

And while progress may not be as rapid as people with disabilities deserve, Selina at VMLY&R has noticed a significant uptick in interest and activity and is hopeful that tides are turning. “In the evolution of accessibility and its inclusion in design practices, we’re currently somewhere on the spectrum between “any news is good news” and “give us genuine representation or nothing”. It’s amazing and important to have these attention-grabbing headlines, and we truly believe that it’s garnered more attention around accessibility. As the trend toward accessible design goes upward, we see true progress and awareness occurring, and not just motivated by trends.” 

For designers, agencies and brands, there is a wealth of information available. The first port of call are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (known as WCAG) from the Web Accessibility Initiative, a body that strives to create agreed international standards to make sure online experiences are ‘perceivable’, ‘operable’, ‘understandable’ and ‘robust’. 

Several of the high-profile tech giants have also been leading the charge with, freely available resources. Microsoft has been a high profile proponent of accessible design with its award-winning adaptable controller for the Xbox and extensive exploration of artificial intelligence to create tools for blind people and those with limited vision – and they’ve created an easy access hub full of inclusive and accessible design educational materials, and tools and activities for designers and creators. In June 2022, Google launched an accessibility playbook after doing extensive, AI-driven analysis of its own content and platforms to identify where it had been falling short. 

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a group founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee that, as part of its mission to create a web that’s safe and that works for everyone, is working hard to empower designers to spread the principles of accessible design and the standards from WCAG. They’ve created a detailed resource to help designers to navigate those standards.

There are a number of tools and plug-ins that designers can use alongside standard UX design platforms like Figma. For example, Use Contrast is a plug-in that can be used with Figma to check colour contrasand Wave is an accessibility evaluation tool developed by Utah State University. Google Lighthouse also a free-to-use tool. The good news is that there are dedicated groups and forums available on social media sites like LinkedIn, and platforms like Adobe and Wordpress have their own forums for people looking to create accessibile experiences with their tools.

However, while these technical standards are important and create clarity for designers, Barrett Reiff-Morse, director of product at Stauffer says that creatives, designers and clients shouldn’t lose sight of the important role that empathy and emotion plays. “It is important to keep in mind that accessibility is not just technical. The composition and the character of the content in an experience that must be accessible as well. Using language, imagery, and iconography that are approachable and accessible to your audience is critical to a project, product, or initiative’s success,” he says, pointing out that tone should also be considered. 

Some conventions have become adopted by the mainstream. For example contrast ratio is fairly ingrained as a core part of UX design. Contrast ratio measures the difference in luminance between text and background and acceptable levels of contrast can differ according to font size. Designers can easily check their contrast, which Kanna says is “a small but positive development”.

However, argues Kanna, some accessibility features have been adopted by chance rather than as a result of a concerted effort to create truly inclusive experiences. “This is is my personal opinion, but I don’t believe that accessibility has been emphasised to the extent it should be in terms of experience design in business,” says Kanna, who points out that the practice of adding alternative text to images and videos is often done not to help people with visual impairments but to maximise search engine optimisation.

Subtitles are another accessibility tool that performs a dual purpose. Subtitles and transcript files can improve the searchability of video content on platforms like YouTube – and viewers are increasingly opting to view with captions. In 2022, Netflix revealed that 80% of viewers watch content with captions or subtitles at least once a month. So there are certain accessibility features that are easy wins for designers and brands at the very beginning of their accessible design journey.

Begrudgingly or accidentally incorporating accessible elements into experience design because they happen to have ulterior benefits is a back-to-front approach that will mean that brands will fail to capitalise on all of the benefits of accessible design. Instead, ‘Solve for one, extend to many’ is a core idea within accessible design – the idea that putting accessible design upstream will inevitably create benefits for everyone. That means purposefully and actively looking to create more accessible experiences, designers will inevitably discover creative solutions that make life better for everyone.

“It is important to understand that gains made through accessibility do not just benefit people with disabilities and/or neurodiverse individuals, but all of us engaged with the experience,” explains Barrett Reiff-Morse. “For example, making text highly viewable on a display not only helps those that are colorblind or visually impaired, but also those with bad seats or viewing angles. Accessibility compliance increases the communication and experience for everyone involved.”

Indeed, a recent Stauffer project for a fintech client turned theory into reality – an accessibility-first mindset challenged the brand’s existing design guidelines and was embraced enthusiastically across the board during testing. “In this case, the primary tool in this industry is a spreadsheet (typically Excel or Google Sheets), so their tools reflected those design paradigms, such as rigid shapes / sharp corners, use of colour to convey primary meaning, dense data. These conventions created a number of design and usability challenges that were eliminated by the combination of modern design principles and accessibility standards,” says Barrett. “The product achieved a 90%+ satisfaction rating from its beta users during its initial launch, setting a new standard for product delivery at their organisation. In this case, an accessibility-forward approach benefits everyone, not just those that have a requirement for it.”

That’s something that the team at Applied Design also discovered themselves when they were working on a new typeface for people with low vision. The mindset switch happened when they realised that they had created something that was beautiful and useful for a far broader user base than they’d initially considered

“I look at our work on Atkinson Hyperlegible with The Braille Institute, the typeface for people with low vision, as a defining moment in the development of the point-of-view our team at Applied Design bring to all projects,” says Craig. “It was somewhat of an epiphany that inclusive design done right can be beautiful, enjoyable and of benefit to everyone.”

For accessible design to take root and flourish it needs to be built into agency culture and workflows. At Stauffer, an agency with offices in Los Angeles and Edmonton, accessibility has already been baked into its design process, whether or not a specific project brief raises it as a focus. Barrett Reiff-Morse at Stauffer explains: “It is a foundation requirement – all work coming out of the agency is WCAG-AA as a standard. Sometimes certain projects and/or clients have requirements which WCAG-A is used as an absolute baseline; there really is no reason to go below that. We use a variety of plugins in our design tools to ensure things like contrast and colour usage are compliant from the start. We also conduct collaborative reviews involving user experience, design, and development to make connected accessibility decisions across the product development lifecycle.”

With so many resources and a rising awareness of the importance of accessibility in web and experience design is starting to gain traction – and for those brands that are more stick than carrot, there’s always the threat of legal action. In June 2025, EU member states will begin enforcing the European Accessibility Act, and several countries are already imposing financial penalties on companies whose platforms and portals fail to comply with baseline accessibility standards. In the US, there has been a growing number of lawsuits against companies with inaccessible online services on the basis that they contravene the Americans with Disabilties Act. While juggernauts like Netflix, Domino’s, Amazon and Nike have all found themselves in the crosshairs, activists complain that accessibility with regards to websites is poorly defined by the Department of Justice.

These legal cases do create additional impetus and their impact is being felt around the world. “In the wake of a number of high-profile lawsuits such as the Domino's Pizza case in the United States in 2019, where they lost a lawsuit for failing to deliver website accessibility, I believe there has been an increased opportunity to discuss accessibility with our global clients when we support creating their design guidelines,” says Kanna, reflecting on the impact an American lawsuit is having on her practice in Japan.

 

Indeed, when Dutch lifestyle brand Moooi was hit with an accessibility lawsuit in the USA, the Build in Amsterdam team was tasked with redesigning the e-commerce platform to conform to WCAG 2.0. The team partnered closely with the Dutch Accessibility Foundation to ensure that they were on the correct track. For Margot Gabel, an associate creative director at Build in Amsterdam, the experience proved that accessibility is a gift to designers looking to push their craft and to innovate. “While web accessibility guidelines may initially seem like a constraint, we have found that they offer a valuable framework for innovation, enabling us to find new and diverse ways to integrate accessibility into our designs,” she says.

As Craig from Applied Design points out, whatever the legal requirements are, or may become, focusing solely on the letter of the law could miss opportunities for true creativity. “Unfortunately, it [accessibility] has historically been somewhat of an afterthought. Something addressed at the end with a compliance mindset. However, the best experience doesn’t reveal itself until you stop trying to juggle the needs of people with disabilities separately alongside people that don’t have disabilities and start to think of it all as one need — an experience that works well for everyone,” he says. “That was the approach Applied Design took when designing the typeface Atkinson Hyperlegible. It was challenging to design a font that is easier and more enjoyable to read for people with low vision, ageing eyes and perfect vision. Ironically, going all-in from the beginning was what liberated us from the norms that could otherwise have held us back.”

Selina at VMLY&R agrees. “Accessibility is a design opportunity – not a roadblock.”

And, as Barrett at Stauffer says, this is something that’s as important for clients to understand as designers. “I am also often confronted with the value question from clients as to the investment in accessibility versus other features or services. I think it is important for stakeholders to understand accessibility compliance as an investment in their constituents and markets rather than a cost or burden to be borne.”

The importance of legal enforcement can’t be overstated, but it’s crucial that the community is driven by more than merely compliance, Barrett says. “I think there is still a lack of understanding of the importance of accessibility beyond it being a requirement. Empathy is a core component of the experience design process and striving to be as accessible as possible. We should strive to make things accessible because it is the RIGHT, not just required, thing to do.”

Indeed, there is a moral imperative to accessibility - non-accessible platforms and services can cut people off from vital resources. That really highlights accessible design as a human rights issue. Selina reflects on a campaign created with the Department of Health and Human Services during the Covid vaccine roll out. The campaign was designed to consider all aspects of inclusivity, such as culture, language, region and accessibility. “ It was important to us and HHS that all materials put out into the public, on such a critical issue, were as accessible and inclusive as possible,” she says.

When it comes to accessibility and user experience, particularly on websites and platforms, the most obvious first port of call is to consider visual clarity and accessibility for those with visual impairments or cognitive needs around visual processing. However, designers and brands are also taking a more 360 approach to accessibility that considers all of the ways a user might interact with a given service or experience. 

Tom at Solarflare highlights Amazon Prime’s recently launched Dialogue Boost feature, which allows users to customise dialogue volume as an inspiring and creative example of inclusive thinking.” Amazon's commitment to leveraging technology and introducing industry-first innovations encourages the design community to prioritise accessibility,” he says. “Simple things like these do so much good for the accessibility world, and agencies both large and small need to bear these things in mind.”

This multisensory approach to accessibility is core for Margot Gabel and something that was at the heart of the Moooi redesign.” Moooi has a very special approach to furniture and lighting design, promoting ‘A Life Extraordinary’. Walking through their beautiful flagship store in Amsterdam, touching the fabrics, smelling their home fragrances and listening to the soundscapes played in the background inspired us a lot. Because web accessibility means that you have to allow users to interact with your content with more than one sense (sight), we settled on creating a ‘multi-sensory’ online experience where you can almost ‘touch’ the products, hear and feel them through video and compelling interactions.”

Moreover, it’s important for designers to consider all aspects of interaction. Being able to perceive and understand an experience is just one side of the equation – people with disabilities should also be able to easily input and direct the experience. That’s something that Microsoft’s Adaptive Controller epitomised, though Margot points out that there are some even simpler solutions that designers should consider. Keyboard navigation, for example, could help people with diverse needs who struggle using the mouse, touchpads or touchscreens. “Our operating systems and softwares can all be easily used with a few keystrokes, making our process easier and much faster. The web is not there yet. In my eyes keyboard navigation is incredibly powerful and too many websites right now still ignore it or hijack it in a way that is barely usable.”

A UX project can start off with the best of intentions, but guesswork, hunches and out-the-box solutions aren’t enough to create truly accessible experiences. Just as usability testing is a core part of the UX design process, Kanna argues that accessibility testing should be standard practice.

 

“I would like to see accessibility testing incorporated into the product testing process. It is of course important to consider accessibility during the design phase but also incorporating it to the testing process will make a positive difference for brands. For instance, in software development, adding accessibility checks as part of the QA process allows us to identify areas of the product that may have accessibility issues,” she says.

 

“This understanding can provide valuable insights for future improvements, design iterations, and development,” Kanna continues. “By including accessibility testing in the overall testing process, we can ensure that the product is inclusive and meets the needs of a wider range of users.”

Margot suspects that artificial intelligence could be put to good use in this regard, which would make accessibility more accessible for smaller companies working on lower budgets. “Despite a wide range of available methods and tools, a large part of the testing process is still manual, and can require real user testing which is time-consuming and can be costly for smaller firms,” she says. “While we should not replace that last human part of the testing process, I am optimistic that forthcoming AI-powered tools will enable us to detect and address accessibility issues in design and code with greater efficiency!”

Nonetheless, despite the efficiencies that tech can bring to accessibility testing, as well as tools that allow creators to mimic certain situations, Margot still believes that improving testing means actively involving people with disabilities. “Their input and feedback can provide valuable insights in contrast with automated tests.”

Ultimately, for UX Design to fulfil its potential as a pathway to accessible experiences, it’s not enough to seek to design for disabled people but to design with them or, better yet, to create space for people with disabilities to lead. “The voices of disabled people could always be uplifted more,” says Selina. “Until every design and project put out into the world has the input of disabled people, we can all do more to ensure that designs incorporate their voices.”

Adam and Ted advise taking a broad-ranging approach in order to find unexplored avenues for better design. As well as working directly with official bodies and gathering together panels, the internet is alive with communities who have already identified barriers and problematic areas.

“Take the time to listen and read through forums on Discord, Reddit and beyond – people with disabilities are very vocal about what and how they can be improved. You just need to be open to incorporating those into your designs and making a more inclusive product at the end of it,” they say. “Off the back of DFEG, RNIB created their own panel of gamers with sight loss from all over the globe to test and give feedback on future gaming titles. It’s only with the help of these communities that we can really make change and develop solutions.”

However, the biggest win would be to recruit and empower designers with disabilities so that disabled people are more than advisers but leaders and creators. “I would like to see progress that enables more people with disabilities to be among the creators of UX and CX so that their knowledge, perspective and experience can guide best practices,” says Craig at Applied Design.

“The voices of disabled people could always be uplifted more,” says Selina at VMLY&R. “Until every design and project put out into the world has the input of disabled people, we can all do more to ensure that designs incorporate their voices.”

When discussing UX and accessibility, it’s easy to fall into the trap of limiting one’s scope to screen-based experiences and platforms. But user experience covers more than just ecommerce websites and as new technologies become more normalised, new accessibility challenges and opportunities arise for UX designers.

Progress is rarely linear and Barrett at Stauffer illustrates, with a charmingly retro example. “As is inevitable, some of these evolutions gave rise to new problems. For example, you didn’t have contrast problems in the ‘90s when you only had 16 colours to choose from; now, with over 1 billion colours renderable on the latest iMac, we have to check for things like contrast. This is the cost of the evolution of our technologies and behaviours; a cost well worth paying in my opinion and one that has created a richer digital experience paradigm across touchpoints.”

At Solarflare, they’re currently wrangling experiences that hinge around augmented reality and gamification. They’ve also previously worked on out-of-home physical experiences where they’ve used touch haptics to make experiences for people living with Parkinson’s disease.

“Currently we’re working with a sports brand on a variety of different global experiences involving a lot of gamification, and a lot of information led in augmented reality, and across all of these moments we’re really trying to think how to make it accessible, not only in terms of different languages across the world, but also making sure it is accessible in the simplest of ways, whether its video or audio. For example in the AR space we have text that needs to be translated into 16-20 different languages and this means typographical challenges where we need overlays to improve legibility, especially for those who are sight-impaired. This means using larger text, making sure we meet WCAG guidelines, and also an extra step of introducing an audio cue making text to speech across all languages to explain the wealth of information across the experience. I feel really passionate about this, as we’re creating such an exciting thing and we have such beautiful artwork, that we want to make the most of it, so everyone from all walks of life can enjoy it.”

For the team at The&Partnership, gaming is a major focus. Financially, gaming rakes in more money than the movie and music industries combined, but the sector is still failing millions of gamers by failing to incorporate accessibility into the UX – hence The&partnership and RNIB’s mission to create platforms and resources for games developers. “Research from Goldsmiths University and RNIB showed that only around 15% of game developers have sufficient knowledge of gamers with sight loss,” reveal Adam and Ted. “There are millions of gamers worldwide, but for those designing them there was a knowledge gap.” 

As Selina at VMLY&R reflects, the quest to improve the accessibility of user experiences is an ongoing and potentially limitless journey. “The beauty and challenge of accessibility is that the work and progress never ends,” says Selina. “It’s rewarding to see so many agencies and clients hopping on board the train, but at times it can feel disingenuous. Our hope is that while embracing accessibility and inclusion, companies embrace it as a core part of their culture, and not just as a trend or a box to tick. The fact that accessibility is a topic and more and more general events like Adobe MAX and FigJam is exciting and inspiring.”

Normalising accessibility as a core driver of UX design is, says Margot, everyone’s responsibility. “We have to continue promoting education and awareness within design/coding schools, companies, the online design communities and beyond,” she says. “The accessibility of the digital space should be just as obvious as that of physical space.”

And ultimately, progress will be achieved when those who are already prioritising accessibility can share the challenges, tools and solutions that they’ve already explored. That way those who are on that journey can evolve faster – and those who are yet to start can see a path forwards.

For Adam and Ted, companies sharing knowledge is key. “It’s not that people don’t want to help, it’s that they don’t have the necessary knowledge at their disposal. When brands start sharing the knowledge and progress they’ve made (and how they got there) then accessibility will happen at a much faster rate. When we can all sing from the same song sheet, people who need the accessibility functions the most will know what they’re getting when they’re using your products.”

And as important as this collegiate collaboration among designers and competing agencies, clients too need to take part in driving change, as Barrett points out. “Business stakeholders need to understand the value and necessity of accessibility and invest in them in projects and products. This is an active topic of discussion within the experience design community. Continuing these discussions in the design community, inclusion in school curriculum, and accessible ongoing training products all help and must continue. Ultimately, the organisational and business stakeholders commissioning the work must find value in accessibility and the constituents it serves.”

Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash