When I talk to other designers about accessibility, they frequently shrug and say things like: “I use the Color Contrast Tool, so I’m compliant.” That’s appreciated more than “the dev team takes care of that and there is some kind of checklist they follow. I don’t really know, it’s not my job.”

If you venture out into your bigger team, a project manager might express concern that your company can “get sued because of ADA laws” if your product doesn’t meet accessibility standards or they just don’t see a business case. These non-design team members seem to be more motivated by the stick, instead of the carrot.

User-Centered Design

As designers, most of us say that we create ‘user-centered’ design. And aren’t we carrot-motivated? We claim that we are empathetic. What does that really mean? If you aren’t actively participating in the process of ensuring that the end result is accessible, how are you truly centering your design on your user? Is your design and user research solely focused on the ‘able-bodied’ user? (What does an ‘able-bodied’ user even look like by the way?) Don’t you want to make sure that your product can be used by as many people as possible? I have many questions.

Misconceptions

I know that baking accessibility into the design process doesn’t seem to be common, or at least not with the designers I know. I think that there is an assumption that it’s too much work, or that it isn’t sexy — that accessibility isn’t innovative. Designers like freedom, not constraints.

We might think that accessible websites and apps will be ugly and boring if they are complying with accessibility standards. Or we could think that it’s just not worth worrying about when we have a heavy workload divided into sprints and no apparent place to start.

Maybe our managers don’t see the value and think it’s a waste of time because they don’t understand that accessibility can improve the user experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities. They don’t know that “when we design for accessibility, it ends up benefiting a much broader group of people.”

Accessibility doesn’t have to be expensive, time-consuming, and hard to implement. If you start in the beginning, it can make a big impact. If you start mid-cycle, it still makes an impact. Towards the end of the project isn’t ideal to shoe-horn in accessibility, but it’s better than never. As with anything, it’s cost savings when you spend the time upfront. It’s never too late to start incorporating accessibility practices into your design process. Do what you can, when you can.

Taking Action

So what’s a designer to do? How can you start making inroads on being accessible? A lot of designers operate in an agile world. Create some accessibility issues and put in your backlog. Sprinkle them in upcoming sprints. Update your design system with accessible components and create a design checklist for you and your team to follow. You can start small. Any effort to become more accessible will be a win. Talk to others, let them know that accessibility is not the sole responsibility of the developer. Spread the gospel! And read. There are a lot of good books about inclusive design. Learn about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Add disabilities to your personas to build empathy. When you are ready, go a step further and attend a conference like Knowbility’s AccessU or the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference.

I know that people are stretched thin, we are all trying to do more with less — in this ‘work-from-home because COVID sucks’ world we find ourselves in. I know we have all experienced technology issues that disrupt our work and lives. Can you imagine if you had vision or hearing issues on top of what you have experienced? Recently there have been reports of websites for COVID testing and immunizations not being accessible. We can do better than this. We should be concerned about the lack of ability to quickly roll out important information quickly to vulnerable populations like people with disabilities. Let’s be motivated by the carrot. Let’s do the right thing and help our users — all of them. Is there really anything sexier, in digital design, than an inclusive product that is easy and delightful to use?

There’s a caveat to consider when you start trying to make some improvements to your product — you know that was coming, didn’t you? Even though I am encouraging people to go out of their comfort zone to learn something new and add more or different work to their plates, I don’t want to have it result in a band-aid fix. Y’all are familiar with this I’m sure. It’s where you don’t really have enough time — so you do something quick and easy just to ‘get ‘er’ done and promise to come back later. We all know how that works out. Don’t be tempted to cut corners by using any old accessibility tool out there on the web. Some of the tools you’ll find are valid tools that will benefit you, but I see there is a growing movement of covering up lack of accessibility with overlays, which are met with disdain by the accessibility community. (Follow some accessibility people on LinkedIn and you’ll see what I mean!) Step away from the overlay tool. It is not your friend. So make sure that when you do implement something, that it’s not actually creating more problems.