Bridging the Gap: Why Accessible Design Eludes Even the Best Designers
Even the most talented designers can create websites that exclude users with disabilities. This happens not because of ill intent, but because accessibility guidelines can be overwhelming to remember during the design process. This article explores the root causes of this gap and proposes a practical solution rooted in Jakob Nielsen's usability heuristics. Through a series of questions and answers, we'll uncover why good designers sometimes produce bad websites, why accessibility is life-or-death, and how to make recognition of accessibility issues easier during design.
Why do good designers sometimes create inaccessible websites?
Designers are inherently good people; they rarely intend to exclude anyone. Yet, inaccessible websites and apps are common. The disconnect stems from the sheer volume of knowledge required. Designers must juggle visual aesthetics, user experience, content strategy, and technical constraints, all while trying to recall dozens of accessibility guidelines. When faced with such cognitive load, even the most conscientious designer can overlook critical accessibility aspects such as contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, or screen reader compatibility. The problem isn't a lack of empathy—it's a lack of recognition during the design phase. Accessibility considerations often remain abstract until testing, by which point retrofitting is costly and less effective. To bridge this gap, designers need tools that make accessibility issues visible at the moment of creation, not after the fact.
Is web accessibility really a matter of life and death?
Absolutely. Though it might sound dramatic, inaccessible designs can directly affect life events and even death events. Consider a poorly designed bus timetable app: a user with low vision might miss the time of the last bus and fail to attend their daughter's fifth birthday party—a life event. Worse, someone relying on a medical appointment scheduling portal could miss a critical consultation if the interface is confusing. In his essay This Is All There Is, Aral Balkan argues that nearly every designed system can influence life-or-death outcomes. Accessibility isn't just about compliance; it's about ensuring equal opportunity for everyone to participate in essential activities. When we design exclusively for perfect vision, perfect hearing, or typical cognitive abilities, we inadvertently create barriers that can have profound consequences.
Why does exclusion still happen despite designers' good intentions?
Designers know that people vary in how they see, hear, think, and move. But knowing is not the same as remembering in the heat of creative work. The sheer volume of usability heuristics, accessibility guidelines (like WCAG), and best practices is daunting. Designers are expected to recall rules about color contrast, alternative text, focus indicators, semantic HTML, and more—on top of their primary design tasks. The cognitive overload leads to oversight. Additionally, many accessibility guidelines are described in technical or legal language, making them feel disconnected from the visual design process. Exclusion persists because the information required to design inclusively is not easily retrievable when designers are sketching, prototyping, or coding. We need a method that surfaces accessibility considerations intuitively, without adding to the mental burden.
What is the main barrier preventing designers from making accessible designs?
The primary barrier is recall. Designers must maintain a mental checklist of dozens of accessibility principles, from typography to interaction patterns. This is unrealistic given the breadth of topics covered in articles, guidelines, and books. The problem isn't that designers don't care—it's that they can't remember everything. The original article highlights a key insight: take Jakob Nielsen's heuristic “Recognition rather than Recall,” which is usually applied to users, and apply it to designers. Instead of asking designers to recall all accessibility rules from memory, we should design the design environment itself to make those rules visible and easily retrievable when needed. For example, integrated design tools could display contrast warnings in real time, or suggest alt-text formats. By reducing recall demands, we enable designers to recognise and fix issues during creation, not after.
How can Jakob Nielsen's usability heuristics help designers with accessibility?
Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics, first published in the mid-1990s, are still relevant today. The sixth heuristic, “Recognition rather than Recall,” states that users should not have to remember information across different parts of an interface. The same principle can be flipped to apply to designers: the information needed to produce an accessible design should be visible or easily retrievable when the designer is working. For instance, a design tool could show a contrast checker overlay, or a plugin could automatically flag missing form labels. This shifts the burden from long-term memory to immediate perception. By embedding accessibility cues into the design workflow, we make it easier for designers to recognise issues without needing to recall every guideline. This approach turns accessibility from a separate checklist into an integrated part of the design process.
What is the proposed solution to make accessibility easier for designers?
The solution is to redesign the design process itself using the principle of recognition over recall. Instead of expecting designers to memorize all accessibility requirements, we should create tools, templates, and workflows that surface relevant information automatically. For example, design software could include built-in accessibility audits that highlight issues as you create: low contrast, missing alt text, insufficient touch targets, etc. Reference materials like Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery's book A Web for Everyone offer practical guidance, but we need to integrate that wisdom into the tools designers use daily. Mockup tools, code editors, and prototyping platforms should all provide context-aware hints. Additionally, teams can adopt design systems with accessible components, so that many decisions are already made. The goal is to make the right choice the easy choice, reducing the cognitive load and allowing good intentions to translate into inclusive outcomes.
What resources can help designers implement accessible design more consistently?
Several resources align with the recognition-over-recall approach. The book A Web for Everyone by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery offers a holistic framework covering content, design, code, and evaluation. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) remain the standard, but they are dense; tools like WAVE or Axe can check pages automatically. For design tools, plugins such as Stark (for Figma/Sketch) provide contrast checks, colorblind simulation, and focus order visualization. Designers can also use pattern libraries with built-in accessibility—like the U.S. Web Design System—to avoid reinventing the wheel. The key is to embed these resources directly into the workflow, so that designers encounter them naturally. Teams should also conduct regular inclusive design reviews, using personas with disabilities to test designs early. By combining tools, training, and a culture of accessibility, we can make exclusion a rarity rather than the norm.