Forem: A11y News

The Hidden Costs of Accessibility Audits: A Project Manager’s Guide

Laura Wissiak, CPACC — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 12:39:00 +0000

Pair accessibility audits with your standard QA process. It reduces the chance of late‑phase surprises that derail both your budget and your timeline.

Why Accessibility Audits Matter for Project Managers

As a project manager, you already juggle deadlines, budgets, and stakeholder expectations. Accessibility might feel like a “nice‑to‑have,” but neglecting it early on creates hidden costs that can triple in later project phases.

Boehm’s curve — which shows us that fixing problems later costs exponentially more — is a useful starting point. But there’s also what I call the Unknown Factor : Nobody does it wrong on purpose. Teams miss issues because they don’t know they exist, or they underestimate their impact. That’s why accessibility needs to be scoped and measured deliberately, not as an afterthought.

Step 1: Define What You’re Auditing

Accessibility is measured against WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Most legal requirements still cite WCAG 2.1 , but you’ll want to check against WCAG 2.2 to future‑proof your project.

Practical approach for PMs:

Keep the WCAG 2.2 open in one tab.
Create a document where you list which criteria apply, which might apply, and which don’t (with a short note why).
This gives you a scope baseline and a good defense if questioned later.

Step 2: Distinguish Between Objective and Subjective Criteria

Some criteria are easy to measure:

Alt text : Does every image have an alt-attribute? (SC 1.1.1)
Captions : Are they present for video? (SC 1.2.2)
Contrast : Does text meet the ratio? (Use tools like WebAIM Contrast Checker.)

Others require judgment calls:

Plain language : WCAG suggests content should be understandable. The EU’s Accessibility Act even requires B1‑level language for banking services. But jargon often makes this subjective.

As a PM, plan extra time for criteria that require human review , not just automated testing.

Step 3: Anticipate Common Failures

According to the WebAIM Million report (analysis of 1M websites), the most frequent failures are:

Low contrast text (79.1%)
Missing alt text (55.5%)
Missing form input labels (48.2%)
Empty links (45.4%)
Empty buttons (29.6%)
Missing document language (15.8%)

Contrast is tricky because tools can’t always test backgrounds like gradients or images. But the others? They’re pure tech debt : Things that should have been done right the first time.

Step 4: Address the Tech Debt

For PMs, here’s the takeaway:

Missing labels, empty links/buttons, and no document language aren’t “nice extras.” They’re baseline functionality that slipped through.
Fixing them later eats into timelines and budgets.
Make them part of the Definition of Done to avoid rework.

Step 5: Plan for Content Effort Too

Accessibility isn’t just development. Writing good alt text is nuanced. You need to decide:

Is the image decorative or informative?
What’s the context?
What description actually helps the user?

Use resources like the Alt Text Decision Tree or Nielsen Norman Group’s guidelines. As a PM, budget for content work — not just code fixes.

Summary: Don’t Freak Out, But Don’t Delay

Accessibility audits may feel overwhelming, but with the right process, they’re manageable. For project managers, the key is:

Scope early : Define which WCAG criteria apply.
Budget realistically : Factor in subjective criteria that need human review.
Prevent tech debt : Make accessibility part of your Definition of Done.
Expect ROI : Addressing accessibility early saves money, prevents fines, and improves user experience.

Accessibility isn’t just compliance. It’s risk management, cost control, and user satisfaction — all things good project managers are measured by.

If you’d like to stay ahead on accessibility without getting lost in technical jargon, check out A11y News — my newsletter breaking down complex accessibility and WCAG updates into actionable insights.

Tools & Resources for Accessibility Audits

Pro Tip: Pair accessibility audits with your standard QA process. It reduces the chance of late‑phase surprises that derail both your budget and your timeline. Here are some trusted tools and references that can guide your accessibility audits. From automated checkers to practical writing guides, these resources will help you move from theory to actionable improvements.

WCAG 2.2 Guidelines The official benchmark for accessibility compliance, with detailed success criteria.
WCAG‑EM Report Tool Helps you document which WCAG criteria apply to your product and track compliance.
WebAIM Contrast Checker A straightforward tool to test color contrast for accessibility compliance.
WebAIM Million Report Annual study analyzing accessibility barriers across the top 1,000,000 homepages.
WAVE Accessibility Evaluation Tool Automated checker that detects many common WCAG compliance failures.
W3C Alt Text Decision Tree A practical guide for deciding when and how to write image descriptions.
Nielsen Norman Group on Writing Effective Alt Text Best practices for writing descriptive, useful alternative text.

DevFest Vienna 2025: How Blind People Navigate the World, On and Offline

Laura Wissiak, CPACC — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 07:40:23 +0000

Watch this on YouTube: DevFest Vienna 2025

Online Navigation

Online navigation works quite similarly to offline navigation, only the tools differ greatly. For online navigation, we mainly have zoom, screen magnifiers, and screen readers (or SR for short). Zoom and screen magnifiers are pretty easy to wrap your head around, either because you tested it on purpose or accidentally hit Ctrl while trying to scroll and got a jump scare by gigantic UI elements: They make things big. Checks out.

But screen readers are more intimidating at first. You boot them up and suddenly everything starts talking! Most of us are not particularly fond of their device issuing unexpected noises because it’s usually a bad thing.

While text-to-speech (or TTS for short) is the intended functionality of text-to-speech screen readers (shocking, I know), it is overwhelming at first. Monotone, technical-sounding voices are simply not a joy to listen to, especially when you have to concentrate on understanding what exactly these voices are describing to you. On another note: Braille displays peacefully coexist with TTS screen readers and are a staple for web access!

It’s time to talk about the oh-so-dreaded screen reader testing!

Screen Reader Output

So screen readers read what’s on the screen? Wrong! They read what you wrote into your code! While a software tester who uses a mouse and screen might not notice that your menu exit button is actually a styled div, the SR will. And it will not work as well.

This is where the accessibility tree comes into play. The accessibility tree is how SR and other assistive tech users navigate through a website, climbing along heading levels and structures to find the desired information. The accessibility tree is sprouted by the browser based on the DOM (shorthand for Document Object Model) tree and accessed by platform-specific Accessibility APIs.

The DOM tree contains objects representing all the markup’s elements, attributes, and text nodes. This is precisely why following the h1, h2, h3 … heading structure is important. When you skip heading levels, you cut off the branches that assistive tech needs for a sound climbing route.

But not all screen readers are the same. Let’s briefly go over the differences in screen reader output: Below are 2 popular screen readers reading the same thing in the same browser and both outputting something different:

NVDA vs JAWS

The following table is from our workshop at We Are Developers 2024. The code for it is available under SR Table Navigation on Julia’s profile: CodePen.io/YuriDevAT. You can download NVDA screen reader and follow along.

Testing setup

NVDA 2024.1.0.31547 in Chrome v126.0.6478.127 on Windows 11 Enterprise
JAWS 2022.2204.20.400 in Chrome v126.0.6478.127 on Windows 11 Enterprise

NVDA will say:

“Choose your Starter Pokémon Table with 4 rows and 3 columns Choose your Starter Pokémon caption”

and JAWS will say:

“Table with 4 rows and 3 columns. Choose your Starter Pokémon. Colum 1, row 1, person.”

Same table, same code, same browser, yet 2 different outputs. That doesn’t mean that one is better than the other; they both get the job done. But be aware that there are some nuances between them.

Then what Screen Reader Setup is best for Testing?

Classic UX answer: it depends. Firstly, on your target demographic, but more tangibly, on the operating systems you are developing for. Every year, WebAIM releases a survey for screen reader users where they ask which SR-browser combination they use.

The latest survey was conducted between December 2023 and January 2024. Go check the Screen Reader User Survey #10 Results! While you’re at it, check out the WebAIM Million report as well. The Million report audited 1 million websites to give us a benchmark of progress in web accessibility over the years and the most common WCAG failures. (It’s still low contrast btw.)

Screen Reader Testing Summary:

JAWS and NVDA came out on top with 40.5% and 37.7% respectively. The 3rd place on the podium took VoiceOver with 9.7%. As for browsers, the big 3 are Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox.

results for primary desktop or laptop screen reader use from https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10/

results for browser usage with primary screen reader from https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10/

Offline Navigation

The white cane

She’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she is not only at the moment but a consistently reliable tool for obstacle detection. Reliable because it detects obstacles, floor texture, drop-off points, or stairs going in both directions: up and down. Many startups in the assistive tech space try to replace the white cane, but to be honest, it only took me 2 weeks at Hope Tech Plus to uncover the groundbreaking insight that nobody who uses a white cane actually wants that — surprise, surprise!

But that’s not to say that our global icon for low vision is the solution for everyone. Carrying something around all day puts some strain on your wrists, and bumping into an obstacle can quickly be painful if you have joint problems. For different reasons, people might prefer other techniques, for example, guide dogs.

Guide Dogs

The best of good boys and girls, also known as the four-pawed part of a guide pair. Training takes around 18 months to 2 years in a “puppy boarding school” and includes socialization, basic obedience, and specific keyword training for everyday actions. Labradors, Golden Retrievers, and German Shepherds are the most popular breeds because of their temperament, size, and trainability.

Not every puppy gets to graduate! The most important criterion is the dog’s ability to focus only on their handler and ignore environmental stimuli, such as food on the floor, other people or dogs trying to get its attention, or loud noises. At the same time, they have to stay vigilant about potential threats or obstacles on the way, which requires a lot of concentration. It’s hard work!

According to the International Guide Dog Federation, only around 23.000 dogs are on active duty. Most dogs work up to the age of 10, but this varies depending on the guide pair. The 10th birthday isn’t necessarily the definitive retirement day, but around that time, handlers will start to notice a decline in concentration or less excitement to work from their dog.

Braille

Braille is a code made up of raised dots that can be read with your fingertips. It was invented by Louis Braille (another icon, absolute king behavior) in the early 19th century. It has been in use all around the globe since then, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the same language everywhere. After all, Braille is not a language; it’s a script code. Think of how the Vietnamese language uses the Latin script, yet that doesn’t mean that people who speak Latin-based languages can read Vietnamese.

It is an important tool for literacy. While Text-to-Speech screen readers are awesome, relying exclusively on audio output can lead to limited literacy and a decrease in vocabulary over time. It’s the same concept as why everyone wants their children to read more books: reading benefits one’s literacy. So good on you for reading this! Great job!

For more, check out Braille.ch: it’s a fascinating tactile rabbit hole to go down!

Refreshable Braille Displays

In the Tech world, there are refreshable Braille displays or Braille screen readers. They do exactly the same thing as Text-to-Speech screen readers, but with text output. How many letters they display at once depends on the size.

In April 2024, I hosted a workshop together with Tetragon, who are developing affordable braille products: everything from display to keyboard to printer! The prototype we workshopped with participants — for example, the EcoBraille — requires only one actuator for an entire line of dots, regardless of the length of that line. If it’s a 20-character line: 1 actuator. If it has 80 characters, still only 1 actuator. This means that the display can be disassembled and extended with additional 20-character lines!

And how do Braille displays work?

Speaking of actuators: Refreshable braille displays function by pushing individual pins up into the right position to form a braille letter. Each braille character cell holds 6 pins in a 2 by 3 arrangement. At the bottom of each pin is an actuator that gives the pin the command to jump up or stay put.

How does the device translate to Braille?

Braille Keyboards and displays have braille tables integrated. In addition to 6-dot braille, there’s also 8-dot braille. Looks exactly how it sounds, like 8 pins instead of 6 in a 2 by 4 configuration. The additional 2 pins allow for special characters beyond the standard Latin alphabet. Braille is pretty neat, right?

Accessibility Cheat Sheet 2025: Free Courses, Certification Paths, and Testing Tools

Laura Wissiak, CPACC — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 09:31:19 +0000

Some resources I appreciated along my own a11y way and can recommend not only for developers, nor designers, but for everyone.

Also available as a podcast version

So you wanna be the very best at web accessibility, but don’t know where to start? Print this page out and throw a dart at it because there’s no wrong point to start at. Only varying difficulty settings.

Universal Design

Center of Universal Design
Universal Design for Learning (UDL): The Why, What, and How of Learning. Especially relevant if you are developing courses or instruction materials for teaching, onboarding, or professional development.

WCAG

Duh, this is the first thing you need when talking web accessibility! The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — or WCAG in short — are divided into 4 Principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust, together, they assemble the Power Rangers’ team called POUR-Principles) and 86 Success Criteria (definitely not listing all here, go to W3C.org for that).

WCAG, but in a language I can understand
WCAG in plain English
WCAG 2.2 Subway Map by Theme
WCAG Figma Plugin
WCAG 2.2 Figma card deck
Honorable Mention: The WCAG 3.0 Working Draft
And my favorite one: WCAG Pokécards

But the W3C offers us even more than that! Translations of Current W3C standards and drafts in various languages (although not everything in all languages) are also available and ever extending.

Yes, I know this one is not as fun as comparing the WCAG to Pokémon. But it helps to know the baseline laws that rule the digital accessibility world. You never have to know them by heart, as long as you know where to look them up.

Note : Most modern web accessibility laws and directives are based on the WCAG and Universal Design principles, but don’t use them directly as passing criteria.

The tools of the trade! And to be honest, it can also be more fun to learn through trial and error, instead of theory alone.

WAVE Tool by WebAIM: An automatic testing tool that provides WCAG references for each error, alert, and feature it finds. As with every automatic testing tool, none of them is perfect, but getting acquainted with this one in particular is particularly helpful because the WebAIM Million Report uses it. Learning the limitations of automated testing will help you interpret the findings better.
Speaking of WebAIM: The one and only Contrast Checker, and arguably even better: the Link Contrast Checker to compare 3 colors against each other at once!
Wondering what screen readers people use? Consult the latest WebAIM screen reader survey

We love WebAIM in this virtual house because they give out knowledge for free. The WebAIM Introduction to Web Accessibility Course is free. The only thing you have to pay for is if you want to get a certification.

AccessibleEU does a lot of things, just like the incredible hustler it is; one of them is the AccessibleEU Online Training on Accessible Technology Design. It also comes with a Community of Practice, and both are free, no membership, no European passport required, nothing.

The International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) offers a number of certifications, which are, well, internationally recognized. Notably, the following:

Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies sounds intimidating but is actually only the baseline of accessibility certifications. The CPACC Body of Knowledge is available in English and German.
Web Accessibility Specialist, more self-explanatory, but also way more technical. The Body of Knowledge is available for WAS in English, WAS in German, and WAS in Spanish.
Accessible Document Specialist does exactly that: document accessibility. The ADS Body of Knowledge is only available in English.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like A11y News, my monthly newsletter covering accessibility, practical insights, curated resources, and real-world takeaways.

Let’s connect on LinkedIn if you’d like to chat about accessibility, UX research, or making tech more equitable.

Understanding Deaf-Blindness

Laura Wissiak, CPACC — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 06:51:47 +0000

When you hear the word deaf-blind, you might think “How do you communicate then?” And if you have ever studied anything related to communication, I’m sure your old professor is haunting you right now with Paul Watzlawick’s “One cannot not communicate” with that uuh spooky echo uuuh.

But it’s still puzzling, right? Blind people usually rely on their hearing, and deaf people use sign language to communicate. So, how are deaf-blind people making it work?

“Deafblindness is an invisible disability because there is no way we can know how a person perceives the world unless we ask.” — Dr Leda Kamenopoulou, Associate Professor at UCL

How can deaf-blind people see and hear?

We have already established that blindness is a spectrum. Okay, let’s rather say vision is a spectrum, and legal blindness is further on the low vision side, but it still leaves a lot of leeway. Low vision can include things like tunnel vision, color blindness, night blindness (or nyctalopia if you feel fancy!), and stair blindness, which is more of a consequence of issues in contrast or depth perception.

Too long didn’t read: A lot of different things can make up blindness, and legal blindness isn’t total blindness.

Now I don’t work with people who are deaf or hard of hearing in particular, so I can’t make a blanket statement about it. But after a certain amount of desk research and by using some Detective-Conan-level deduction skills, I would make an educated guess and say that it’s also kind of like a spectrum. Or should I say, a volume slider? Actually, more like an elaborate surround-sound system where you can configure every detail.

One of my Hope Tech interviewees who happened to be deaf-blind described their hearing loss “_as if the high-pitch of a stereo had been turned off”_

I feel as if I’m starting to repeat myself in these posts, but disability is a spectrum. Not everyone is living in complete silence and complete darkness. Some use hearing aids and or glasses, as Blindish Latina does, some use a white cane and braille, and some use sign language interpreters. Some people might need less assistance, and some might need more.

Causes of deaf-blindness

If you go to Wikipedia (my previous professors are shaking in their tweed jackets right now), you will find a long list of potential causes. It’s also perfectly plausible that your eyesight and hearing independently of each other deteriorate over time.

But one to pick out is Usher Syndrome. If your mind immediately goes to the singer Usher Raymond, that’s okay. This article will wait here while you go jam out to Yeah Yeah. Back? Alright, let’s go!

The main symptoms of Usher Syndrome are deafness or hearing loss and retinitis pigmentosa. RP usually causes night blindness, tunnel vision and messes with your color perception. Again, what exactly this can look like is completely individual, and the same goes for how fast it progresses. The hearing loss is caused by the abnormal development of the sound receptor cells in your inner ear.

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I write regularly about accessibility, inclusive UX, and the messy intersection of ethics and product design. Subscribe to my Substack for deep dives, assistive tech user insights, and no-bullshit takes on what really makes tech inclusive.

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Resources on Deaf Blindness

Designing for Disability: Who do we think of?

Laura Wissiak, CPACC — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 17:38:37 +0000

Listen to this on Spotify or Substack (11 minutes).

Who do we think of when we think of an assistive tech user? We think of a blind screen reader user and a wheelchair user, and that’s often it. Our blind personas effortlessly use a screen reader across all their devices, and if we wanna throw a curveball, we make our wheelchair user… a woman! Escandalo!

Does it make a difference for your design process? Because there are plenty of nuances, but all too often it feels like a primarily aesthetic choice.

Disability & Gender

We don’t think of the women who make up a bigger portion of the disabled population. Statistically speaking, women are more likely to be disabled. This is in part due to a higher life expectancy and the naturally higher rate of disability that comes with aging, but also to the gender healthcare gap. Regardless of the reasons why, it is a fact.

Being female (or perceived as female) and disabled comes with a special set of barriers. The already mentioned gender healthcare gap is one of many:

* Sexual violence : Girls and women with disabilities are more likely to experience sexual violence. An example of this is the recent trend of Trisomy 21 filters to promote sexually explicit content. TLDR: Adult actresses (not gendering here on purpose) post videos with this filter and a caption suggesting that they have Down syndrome to generate engagement from comments. This problematic trend illustrates one thing clearly: That women with disabilities are often perceived as ‘helpless’ and hence ‘easier targets’.

I’d be happy to go in depth in another article, but I currently only know of a couple of studies addressing this. If you have sources from your countries, please share them with me.
Study from Germany by BMAS
Study from Austria by BMFWF
Childcare and social stigma: While there is no way to live up to society’s expectations of “a good mother”, disabled women face the additional scrutiny of being asked whether they are even fit to be a parent. I highly recommend the blog by Jessica Slice and her book Unfit Parent for more insights on this topic.
Mobility patterns: While disability plays a role in movement patterns, it is only one of multiple factors. Women mostly have multi-stop mobility patterns instead of A-to-B trips. Women with disabilities are no exception to this, except that they are additionally dependent on station and carriage accessibility. This means that you may have to wait for the next or the next but one train or bus, may have to take a detour to transfer at an accessible station, and for wheelchair and power wheelchair users, it often also means going one more stop back or forth to find a working elevator.
The Better Mobility trend report investigated exactly that.

And breaking news: Disabled people don’t have to be cis gender! Any gender identity you can think of also applies to disabled demographics.

Disability & Invisible Stigma

We don’t think of the traveler with anxiety disorder who’d like to reschedule a flight but can’t find where to do it online.

Having an invisible disability myself, I am astonished by how it seems to be both a fan favorite among web design professionals breaking into accessibility, while at the same time, blatantly disregarded in practice.

Invisible disabilities are not new, but new as a concept to broader demographics. Therefore, the outsider's view of it is still quite stereotyped. Quick exercise: Think about which invisible disabilities you know.

Ready? How many types of neurodivergence did you think of? Did you include varieties of vision and hearing loss? What about stroke, epilepsy, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and cancer? What about depression, anxiety, or panic disorders? And that’s just an assorted selection of what falls under “invisible disability”.

From my interactions with web professionals, I get the vibe that invisible disability is often equated to neurodivergence. Not fully incorrect, but it misses the point. Not everything that is invisible is exclusively happening inside your brain.

An invisible disability is a physical, mental or neurological condition that is not visible from the outside, yet can limit or challenge a person’s movements, senses, or activities. Unfortunately, the very fact that these symptoms are invisible can lead to misunderstandings, false perceptions, and judgments.

InvisibleDisabilities.org

The idea behind the label ‘invisible’ is to get people to understand that disabilities are not always observable, but are nonetheless real. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The idea is to challenge presumptions that disabilities are clear-cut. If we only apply this to types of neurodivergence, we’re not progressing far.

Hidden Disability Sunflower

Some also see the Hidden Disability Sunflower as a solution to this, but I would consider it more of a temporary fix rather than a solution: The sunflower is a tool for disabled people to use when they see fit, not for non-disabled people to recognize disability in the wild.

Through the sunflower lanyard scheme, the sunflower became an indicator that the wearer has a non-visible disability. The campaign is most popular with airports, other big transportation hubs, and, recently, also festivals. And there it makes perfect sense to let staff know a traveler or attendee may need extra time or assistance. However. Let’s do a little thought experiment: You are traveling, maybe even alone. What is the tourists’ number one enemy? The pickpocket. Especially for people with low vision, this is a significant concern because their smartphone is their number one navigation tool. Now, for white cane users, this is a permanent concern, and for some individuals, also a deterring factor that makes them not want to use a white cane, despite recognizing the benefits it would bring.

While it’s great to have a universally recognized indicator when you’re inside a contained, security-checked area, it can quickly become a stigmatizing indicator in less secure settings.

To say the sunflower is the solution to access issues because it provides people around you a heads-up that you are disabled is not empathetic to the lived situation and mental load of being disabled. While the sunflower takes away the mental load of having to anticipate, explain, justify, and maybe even prove that you have a disability, it does not change your access requirements.

Besides that, we are not entitled to know who has and hasn’t a disability and what kind. If we needed this information in order to accommodate people, it would only contribute to distinction and division, not inclusion.

Disability & Language Settings

We don’t think of the multilingual blind person whose screen reader has a strong Hispanic accent because their device is set to Spanish.

A bit of technical background for this: There are device-based and browser-based screen readers. If you are using a screen reader full time, you are likely listening to this on your device-based screen reader. Browser-based ones are more commonly used for the read-aloud function of articles. For example, the Substack app has a read-aloud function, and A11y News is read out by the voice called Taylor.

Device-based screenreaders read everything (that is present in the accessibility tree). You set them up on your device; some come pre-installed, like VoiceOver on macOS, and some you have to install yourself, such as NVDA and JAWS. You configure them to your liking: I’m talking speed, accent, male or female voice. For English, you often have a variety to pick from, but for less global languages, you get maybe one or two options.

And while you technically could pick a British pronunciation for Talk Back while your Android system is set to French, it sounds weird.

In some cases, it also doesn’t work: For example, my phone is set to Japanese, so when I want to check image alt text, it is read out with a comically over-the-top Japanese accent. When I tried switching only SR pronunciation to English, it could read the content, but not the system information - which app I’m selecting, link, button - which was still in Japanese. And for, to me still unknown, reasons, it replaced every Japanese word with Yuan ¥.

The other way around, the Japanese voice was still able to pronounce Latin-based alphabets. So, depending on your device language, it may not even be an option to switch to a different pronunciation without changing the entire system language.

Disability & Lifestyle Identity

We don’t think of the quadriplegic wellness fan who would like to try a new pilates studio but can’t find any information about building accessibility. Okay, at least in Europe we don’t. Maybe it’s different in your region, but I find it already hard enough to determine if a studio has showers, let alone an elevator in the building, a ramp at the entrance, tactile floorlines leading to the toilet, or if the studio space itself is step-free.

Brace yourself for an existential crisis: No person exists just to exist; we all have something we want to do.

So much of designing for access covers only the necessities. This is precisely because we don’t design with accessibility in mind. We have the concept, we build the MVP, and at some point, we realize, “Oh shit, we need to be compliant!” That’s where we start retrofitting accessibility.

This is not inclusive design. Again, all design should be inclusive from the start, but inclusive design in particular teaches to design for the widest audience possible. However, this does not happen if we only apply it partially.

Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode.

Exclusion by Design

Laura Wissiak, CPACC — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 05:28:24 +0000

Listen to this A11y Yap episode.

Disability is part of every community, every country, and every identity. And yet, people with disabilities are still underrepresented in digital spaces, policy decisions, and factually every aspect of public life.

This is not by accident, but by design: Spaces, services, and products are rarely designed to be accessible by default, but rather to meet norms and satisfy the construction inspector.

Historically, individuals with disabilities have been institutionalized and locked away from the public eye. This has often been framed as variations of “for their own benefit” or as a “relief for their caretakers”, in varying nuances of “in the best interest of the public”. Throughout history as well as today. Think of the so-called Ugly Laws that prohibited being in public with a visible disability.

Disability Pride is important because history has called disability “an unsightly or disgusting object”.

Many people have internalized this shame. I did a whole piece on self-stigma, and that barely even scratches the surface of it! But the main gist of it is:

Discrimination is highly arbitrary and doesn’t care about specific markers. Think about what’s recommended for CV writing: no picture, no birthdate, no address, no hints at age, family, and ideally no hint at your gender because all of the above could lead to a subconsciously biased decision against you, without ever seeing you in person.

Efforts against Structural Discrimination

This is also why the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became monumental to the disability rights movement. It was one of the first pieces of legislation targeting discrimination against disabled people on a structural level, all the way back in 1990.

Worldwide, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) aims to achieve equal rights for persons with and without disabilities. For the EU, the UNCRPD entered into force on 22 January 2011. This means that by this date, all EU member states have signed and ratified the convention, and must from then on protect the rights of persons with disabilities. I say “aims to achieve” because every time I see a new report about it, it reads like, “we are still doing terribly.”

This Disability Pride Month marked the 35th anniversary of the ADA.

The ADA specified minimum requirements for access to buildings as well, which is a big deal: You can’t be in the room where it happens if you physically can’t get into said room.

You will see more people with (visible or invisible) disabilities show up if the space and the public transportation to get there are accessible, and the invite came as a properly tagged PDF or structured email instead of a screenshot.

And still, we are far from an accessible world. Both in and outside the USA. If you think about it, it’s outrageous. What is taking us so long?

Human diversity isn’t one-dimensional.

Disability is the one minority group that anyone can become a part of at any point in time. Irrespective of your ethnic background, gender identity, or occupation. But in most cases, we don’t recognize this diversity when we discuss accessible design.

The keyword is intersectionality . When discussing aspects of human identity, we tend to zoom in on one aspect, yet realistically, no one’s identity can be reduced to a singular defining marker.

Who do we think of?

We think of a blind screen reader user, and a wheelchair user, and that’s it. We don’t think of the women who make up a bigger portion of the disabled population. We don’t think of the traveler with an anxiety disorder who’d like to reschedule a flight online but can’t find information about it. We don’t think of the bilingual blind person whose screen reader has a strong Hispanic accent because their device is set to Spanish. We don’t think of the quadriplegic who would like to try a new pilates studio but can’t find any information about building accessibility.

Human diversity doesn’t end within one category. Designing for disabilities should not be seen as a separate task, but equal to designing for a different operating system. The screen reader interaction is exactly that: another kind of interaction.

Make it part of the profession.

Designing for accessibility should not be viewed as a separate domain, but rather as a part of the whole profession. You wouldn’t hire a UI designer who can do anything except for login fields. Or a developer who doesn’t use print statements. Or a software tester who refuses to acknowledge the existence of Microsoft Edge. In the same way, generalists should be expected to know about web accessibility.

Not everything, but - you know - the basics. The annual WebAIM Millions Report doesn’t change because we don’t get better. Because most accessibility issues aren’t super duper niche or technical, they are sloppy and embarrassing.

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