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Accessibility & Inclusivity

You don’t implement accessibility — you start from it

Power Talk
🇬🇧 English

About

Accessibility, a11y, WCAG... A bunch of designers and developers feel these are optional extras for a project. But caring for accessible user experience transforms the internet into a friendly place for all.

Can you see the content of your mobile app on a sunny day? Are the buttons bulk enough to notice and click them for regular users and the short-sighted or seniors? And if I break my right hand, will I be able to surf through the app’s navigation with my left one?

Lastly — is accessibility needless buzz or an actual requirement?

Don’t assume you can take apart an app ‌right now to make it friendlier. Designers should work on accessibility before they design the first mockup and when teammates create content, the branding, and the code. That’s why they need to grasp how different work areas in a project connect and influence the end-result accessibility.

So how can you start with accessibility and lead a process that you start and end spot-on? Alicja Łagodzińska will be #CrossingPerspectives to debate business vs design, exploring plenty of their personal stories based on real projects and real human needs.

Talk by

Photo of Alicja Łagodzińska, Customer Success Manager at The Software House
Alicja Łagodzińska
Customer Success Manager at The Software House

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From the recording

Talk in brief

A practical argument that accessibility is a starting condition for product design, not a feature added after launch. People routinely choose among the few websites they can use, depend on captions when sound is unavailable, and need content that supports different memory and reading patterns. Accessibility guidelines improve general usability and can create productive constraints for design. When teams inherit inaccessible products, incremental remediation is still worthwhile: assess, prioritize, divide the work, and build accessibility into every future change rather than waiting for enough time or budget to fix everything at once.

Key takeaways

  1. 01

    Do not make customers search for usable alternatives

    A product excludes people when they must abandon it and select only the rare service compatible with their needs.

    Watch from 0:59
  2. 02

    Design for situational access needs too

    Captions, clear structure, and multiple formats help disabled customers and anyone using the product in constrained circumstances.

    Watch from 3:32
  3. 03

    Support memory and comprehension explicitly

    Written guidance, onboarding, and reminders reduce reliance on recall without restricting the experience to older customers.

    Watch from 6:15
  4. 04

    Use accessibility as a creative constraint

    Guidelines can improve the overall customer experience and inspire clearer alternatives rather than limiting design quality.

    Watch from 9:00
  5. 05

    Remediate inherited products in prioritized steps

    Iterative improvement is better than postponing all accessibility work until a complete redesign becomes affordable.

    Watch from 17:25
Read edited transcript highlights

These concise notes were edited from automatic captions and checked against the talk structure. They are not a verbatim transcript.

Inaccessibility forces customers to design around the product

When a person can use only a small subset of websites, the market has transferred its design failure to them. They must test, remember, and return to the services that happen to work. Accessibility should therefore be part of the product’s basic definition of done, so customers choose based on value rather than compatibility with avoidable barriers.

Watch from 0:59

Alternative formats support many real situations

A screen reader may be essential for one person, while captions help another watch a video in a shared space without headphones. The same design feature can support permanent, temporary, and situational needs. Teams should provide equivalent ways to perceive and operate the experience instead of deciding which customer circumstance is legitimate enough to support.

Watch from 3:32

Products should not depend on perfect recall

Complex onboarding delivered once assumes that every customer reads, remembers, and returns under ideal conditions. Written guidance, progressive instruction, reminders, and visible status reduce that burden. These supports help people with cognitive or memory differences while also improving recovery for anyone returning after time away from the product.

Watch from 6:15

Constraints can make the experience clearer

Accessibility guidelines ask teams to communicate hierarchy, focus, meaning, alternatives, and feedback explicitly. That discipline often improves the product for everyone and creates new design opportunities. The goal is not to make every interface identical; it is to preserve expression while ensuring that important content and actions do not depend on one sense or ability.

Watch from 9:00

An imperfect product can still improve now

Legacy systems may contain more barriers than one release can remove. Audit the most important journeys, prioritize severe blockers, assign owners, and include accessibility in all new work. Publishing a credible sequence is better than using the absence of a complete budget as a reason to change nothing, provided the team remains transparent about remaining limitations.

Watch from 17:25
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