The Paradox of Good Designers and Exclusionary Sites
Designers are, by and large, empathetic individuals. Few professionals would openly admit to ignoring the needs of users with disabilities. Yet the web is littered with beautifully crafted sites that are difficult—or even impossible—to navigate for people with visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor impairments. This disconnect between intention and outcome is not a product of malice, but of a deeper systemic challenge: the sheer volume of guidelines that designers are expected to juggle.
Why Accessibility Is a Life-and-Death Matter
When discussing accessibility, some might argue that it's a nicety rather than a necessity. In his influential essay This Is All There Is, Aral Balkan dismantles that notion. He argues that virtually every designed interaction has the potential to affect life-changing events. Consider a simple bus timetable app:
- A poorly designed interface might cause someone to miss their daughter's fifth birthday party—a life event.
- It could also prevent someone from reaching a dying grandmother in time—a death event.
These scenarios underscore the real-world stakes. Accessibility isn't an afterthought; it's fundamental to ensuring that digital experiences serve all people, in all moments that matter.
Why Do Accessibility Failures Persist Despite Good Intentions?
We already know the broad categories of user diversity: not everyone sees, hears, thinks, or moves in the same way. So why do exclusionary designs still emerge? The problem, I believe, is “too much to remember.” Designers are asked to absorb a vast array of knowledge: typography, color theory, interaction patterns, responsive layout, performance optimization, and—oh yes—accessibility. With so many heuristics and standards competing for attention, critical guidelines often slip through the cracks.
A Solution: Applying Recognition Heuristics to Design
Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, though dating from the mid-1990s, remain remarkably relevant. One heuristic in particular—No. 6, “Recognition Rather Than Recall”—offers a powerful reframing. Nielsen advised designers to make information required for users visible or easily retrievable. I propose we turn that advice inward: make the information required for designers to produce accessible work visible and easily retrievable. In other words, let’s design our design process to help us recognize accessibility issues, rather than rely on memory.
Making Accessibility Visible During the Design Process
How can we put this into practice? One approach is to integrate accessibility checkpoints directly into the tools and workflows designers already use. For example:
- Checklists and overlays: Embed a distilled list of WCAG criteria into design software (e.g., Figma plugins that flag insufficient color contrast).
- Persona cards: Create physical or digital cards representing users with different disabilities, and place them on the design table—literally or virtually—to keep these perspectives top of mind.
- Peer reviews: Schedule regular “accessibility audits” where team members inspect designs using screen readers or other assistive technologies.
Remember the life-or-death stakes—these small habits can prevent the oversights that lead to exclusion.
Resources and Next Steps
A valuable companion on this journey is the book A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experiences by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery. It provides actionable guidance for integrating accessibility into every stage of the design process, from research to launch. By adopting a mindset of “recognition over recall,” designers can reduce cognitive load on themselves while dramatically improving the user experience for everyone.
In the end, the goal is not just to avoid harming users, but to empower them. Great designers create inclusive experiences—not by accident, but by design.