Designing for Accessibility Is Designing for Real Life
Less about rules and ratios, accessibility is more about how design either supports or quietly (sometimes not so quietly) blocks people in real life.
Accessibility in design is often framed as a set of rules, ratios, or compliance requirements. But at its core, accessibility is about people, how they move through the world, how they perceive information, and how design either supports them or gets in their way.
When we talk about accessibility, we often picture permanent disabilities. In reality, disability exists on a much wider spectrum. Millions of people are disabled, and millions more are functionally disabled in certain contexts, temporarily, situationally, or without ever identifying as disabled at all. Do you wear glasses or contacts? Me too.
Accessibility isn’t rare, and it isn’t theoretical. It affects millions of people, many of whom don’t identify as disabled, and when businesses ignore it, the cost shows up in lawsuits, lost customers, and broken trust.
Who Is Accessibility For (Spoiler: Everyone)
Accessibility is not a niche requirement. It benefits everyone.
Think about:
- Closed captions helping people watch videos in noisy rooms, quiet spaces, or different languages
- Curb cutouts, originally designed for wheelchairs, but also used by parents with strollers, travelers with luggage, cyclists, and delivery workers
- Clear color contrast making interfaces easier to scan in bright sunlight or on aging screens
- Icons, symbols, and labeled colors reducing cognitive load and ambiguity
Even features like dark mode, adjustable text sizes, and motion reduction settings exist because people experience light, movement, and focus differently.
Good accessibility doesn’t call attention to itself. It quietly removes friction.
Accessibility Lives in the Fundamentals
Accessibility doesn’t start with edge cases, it starts with the basics of how people interact with products.
Some users navigate entirely by keyboard. Others rely on screen readers. Some are using one hand on a phone while distracted or interrupted, have you ever tried to send a text with one hand while eating or holding a crying baby? If someone can’t tab through an interface, understand what’s being read aloud, or complete a critical flow without precision input, the product may be technically “usable,” but functionally inaccessible.
Good accessibility comes from designing for different ways of interacting, not assuming there’s a single default user.
The same is true for clarity. Forms, typography, and layout often introduce friction even for users without disabilities. Confusing instructions, unclear required fields, inconsistent patterns, tiny text, or low-contrast helper copy all compound cognitive load. This is where accessibility quietly fails, and where small, thoughtful design decisions can make a big impact. This is the thesis of the book, ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ by Steve Krug. People don’t come to your site or app to view your amazing buttons or linger over your forms. They come to solve a problem or achieve a goal, so they can get back to more important things.
Readability matters. Hierarchy matters. Reducing ambiguity matters.
Color Isn’t Neutral (And Ratios Aren’t Enough)
Most designers are familiar with the WCAG recommendation of a 4.5:1 color contrast ratio. It’s an important baseline, but it’s not a hard rule.
Color contrast is often discussed in the context of low vision, but it also intersects with color blindness, which comes in many forms not just red/green.
A few years ago, we discovered that our daughter is color blind. We didn’t find out until she was sixteen.
She’s always passed the standard red-green tests at the eye doctor. But what she has is a less common type called Tritanpia, however even this is not exact she can still see yellows, but it does affect how she sees, most reds and pinks blend and so do yellows and greens. Suddenly, all those childhood disagreements over color names made sense.
She shared this game design with me, so I could see what she saw and how the use of symbols allowed her to be able to solve the problem. However, in another game a similar problem without the symbols on top of the color, made solving it nearly impossible.
I’ve used a Figma plug-in for color blindness to give an approximate view of what someone with this type of colorblindness would see. However, even from this I can see where it’s not exact. This is where the designer, common sense, and good design thinking come in. As the designer it’s your call, how do you use this information and make it visibly different without making assumptions.
That experience fundamentally changed how I think about color in design. I no longer assume that what I see is what others see, or that passing a contrast check means an experience is actually clear for everyone.
While it’s not always possible to make colors aesthetically perfect for every situation, it is always possible to make color accessible:
- Don’t rely on color alone to convey meaning
- Pair color with labels, icons, or patterns
- Name colors clearly instead of implying meaning
- Test designs beyond automated checks
Accessibility isn’t about sacrificing beauty, it’s about removing ambiguity.
Context Matters: Devices, Media, and Environment
Accessibility changes depending on context.
A design that works on desktop may fail on mobile if touch targets are too small, layouts break when text is resized, or content is blocked by pop-ups or auto-playing media. Responsive design isn’t just about screen size, it’s about adaptability.
The same applies to multimedia. In our house, when watching a movie, captions are almost always on. That’s increasingly common, more people are using captions because they’re multitasking, in shared spaces, dealing with poor audio, or they simply process information better visually.
Captions, transcripts, and alt text support users with disabilities, but they also make content more flexible, searchable, and resilient for everyone.
Accessibility Is Ongoing Work
Accessibility isn’t a one-time task or a box to check. It requires regular audits, real user feedback, collaboration with engineering, and a willingness to revisit decisions as products evolve.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s progress.
Accessibility isn’t about designing for “other people.” It’s about designing for real humans, in real contexts, with real limitations, many of which we’ll all experience at one time or another.
When we design accessibly, we don’t just follow guidelines.
We design with empathy, clarity, and care.
And that leads to better products for everyone.