In this text, I will share everything I have learned and experienced about accessibility throughout my career. My goal is to explain the importance of this topic and provide insights into dimensions that often go unnoticed. I hope that this article, available in my portfolio, will inspire more people to understand and apply accessibility principles in a practical and impactful way.
What you will find in this guide:
- WCAG 2.2 and EAA: main new features and how to implement them.
- Visual impairments: Colorblindness and Motion Sickness.
- Designing for different audiences: children and older adults.
- Neurodiversity: exploring Autism and Dyscalculia.
- Sensory impairments: deafness and blindness.
Throughout this article, I will explore key topics from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2), highlighting what has changed with the new update and how it impacts digital projects. We will also address challenges such as motion sickness, its implications, and design strategies to reduce it.
In addition, I will detail inclusive design practices for children and older adults, sharing specific insights to meet the needs of these groups. We will continue with an introduction to neurodiversity, including examples of how to design for people on the autism spectrum or with dyscalculia, and we will conclude by discussing the needs of users with deafness and blindness.
Finally, I will conclude with practical tips on how to integrate accessibility seamlessly into the workplace, something I have tried to apply in my day-to-day work within an organization.
Whether you are a designer, developer, or anyone interested in the topic, this guide is designed to help you transform your work and make it truly accessible to everyone. Let’s get started!
Understanding accessibility clearly
Before we dive into the topics in this guide, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of accessibility. Many projects fail to address this issue, not because of a lack of skill or good intentions on the part of designers, but because of a lack of empathy and the mistaken perception that accessibility is something far removed from everyday priorities.
This view needs to change. Accessibility is not just relevant, it’s essential, and I firmly believe that together we can make this transformation start today.
Accessibility is not a checklist
It’s common to think of accessibility as a to-do list or a collection of checkboxes to be ticked. However, this falls far short of its true meaning. Accessibility is not about meeting a set of technical requirements; it’s about creating inclusive experiences for all people.
In practice, accessibility is an integral part of the user experience. It’s not separate from design or development; it’s the way people interact with and experience a website, app, or digital product.
A collective effort
Accessibility is not something we add to a project after it’s done. It is an ongoing effort, a commitment that involves all professionals – whether they are developers, engineers, designers, content editors or any other role.
By changing this mindset, we begin to see accessibility as an essential part of digital creation, not as an obligation or an extra item. This is what makes the experience more human, inclusive and meaningful.
This is the time to rethink and redefine how we deal with accessibility. It is not about “fulfilling” something, but about ensuring that our products are experienced equally by everyone.
Accessibility is not a compliance checklist.
It’s an effort to maintain a meaningful and usable digital experience for as many people as possible. There are no edge cases or average users.
Redefining the Way We Talk About Accessibility
When we look at how people and companies view accessibility and design, it’s clear that there’s a limited and often misunderstood understanding. Accessibility is often seen as a technical thing – a skill or implementation designed exclusively to meet the needs of people with disabilities.
In contrast, when we talk about inclusive design, the focus is broader: it’s about considering all human diversity in its different shapes, sizes, colors and contexts. The goal is to create solutions that are inclusive for everyone, going beyond technical definitions of disability and encompassing a full range of needs and experiences.
- Accessibility: Often seen as the adaptation of products or services for people with disabilities.
- Inclusive design: A process that seeks to include human diversity in all its dimensions, creating products that meet the needs of everyone from the beginning.
- Universal design: The creation of products that are usable by all people, without the need for adaptations or specific versions for different groups.
While there are contexts in which separate versions may make sense (such as websites or applications created for very different target audiences), the future points to universal design, where inclusion is integrated into the product as a whole.
The shift we need
We need to reframe the way we talk and think about accessibility. Rather than treating it as a technicality or an additional step in the design process, we need to incorporate it as a natural part of creating products and services.
This approach goes beyond “tailoring” something to meet specific needs. It’s about designing experiences that, from the beginning, consider all people, regardless of their abilities, backgrounds, or characteristics.
This shift requires us to stop seeing accessibility as a “cost” or “extra effort” and start treating it as an essential element of creating better, more human products that are more aligned with real-world diversity.
Bridging Languages: Accessibility and the Business World
The gap between the language used by companies and the language we use as accessibility designers can seem like a chasm. On one side, corporate speak is permeated by terms like “attracting eyeballs,” “increasing customer lifetime value,” and “picking battles.” These terms sometimes sound like an attempt to “extract as much value as possible” from people by reducing them to numbers and metrics.
On the other side, in the field of accessibility and UX, the focus is on reducing friction, creating inclusive experiences, and, in theory, developing empathy—a concept that is often misunderstood. After all, how do you “develop” empathy? Either you have it or you don’t.
Connecting accessibility to business reality
When we talk about accessibility, we need to find a bridge between these two worlds. It’s not about completely adopting corporate speak, nor limiting the conversation to the technical vocabulary of UX. There needs to be a balance, a way to translate the value of accessibility into something that makes sense within business priorities.
Business Language
1. “Conquer” the market
2. “Capture” attention
3. “Target” customers
4. “Destroy” the competition
5. “Fight” for market share
6. “Convert” and “follow-up”
7. Employ a sales “force”
8. Hire “headhunters”
9. Pick your “battles”
10. Attract more “eyeballs”
11. Get users “hooked”
12. Increase “lifetime value”
Accessibility/UX Language
1. “Reduce” friction
2. “Improve” consistency
3. “Empower” users
4. “Enable” and “help” users
5. “Meet” user expectations
6. “Refine” touchpoints
7. “Empower” users/customers
8. “Customer service” or support
9. Build “trust” with users
10. Understand “user needs”
11. Develop “empathy”
12. Create an “inclusive” experience
A careful and strategic speech
Whenever we enter into a conversation about accessibility, it’s crucial to be strategic. Adopting a tone that connects business objectives with accessibility values creates a common ground for discussion.
The real value of accessibility lies in including more people and reducing barriers, but how we communicate this can be crucial in transforming the perception of business leaders.
A well-aligned narrative can show that accessibility is not just about empathy or inclusion, but also about efficiency, growth, and real business impact.
Changing Perceptions
To combat the misconception that accessibility is a one-off effort, we need to talk about its universal relevance. It’s a strategy for creating better products, attracting more users, and making a difference at the same time. When this idea is well articulated, the impact goes beyond business metrics: it transforms culture.
Making Accessibility More Understandable
One of the most powerful approaches I present in meetings is based on the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit framework. This model clearly and visually outlines the different types of situations that can impact accessibility: permanent, temporary, and situational. This framework is incredibly effective in helping people understand how accessibility goes beyond permanent disabilities.
Permanent
Temporary
Situational
Visual accessibility
A visually impaired person.
Someone with an eye injury.
A distracted driver who can’t look at the screen.
Hearing Accessibility
A person who is deaf or hard of hearing.
Someone with an ear infection.
A person at a noisy train station.
Speech accessibility
Someone who cannot speak due to a medical condition.
A person with a sore throat.
A traveler in a country where they do not speak the local language.
These examples connect accessibility needs to everyday situations, helping companies and teams realize that accessibility is about serving everyone, every time – not just people with permanent conditions.
Integration with business purpose
By applying this framework to a business context, such as a flight booking company, we can map out how different situations affect the user experience and the impact this has on the business. For example:
- Accessible flight experience relies on considering customers in different situations, such as a stressed passenger or one who does not speak the local language well.
- A distracted driver may need simpler, more visual interactions.
- A person in a noisy environment requires alternatives such as visual notifications.
This approach directly connects accessibility solutions to business value, showing how they can improve the customer experience and ultimately the company’s bottom line.
The most important idea I’m trying to convey is that accessibility isn’t just about permanent conditions. It can be temporary or situational, and anyone can benefit from it at some point.
For example:
- A person with a temporary arm injury may face similar challenges as someone with a permanent disability.
- I had my first child in October 2024, and I had to hold my baby in my arms because I couldn’t walk with the stroller down the street.
- Or, if I need to hold my baby, I may not be able to type with both hands, facing a situational limitation.
These examples make accessibility more tangible, especially for those who don’t initially see its importance. They help expand the perception that accessibility is for everyone, increasing engagement and understanding that it’s not a one-off effort, but part of a good user experience.
Disability Mindset
People don’t think of themselves as disabled, so they don’t think the accessibility features apply to them. People often don’t realize that they rely on accessibility all the time.
Eric Bailey
Overcoming barriers to communicating about accessibility
Many years ago, I realized something fundamental: feeling misunderstood when talking about accessibility is more common than it seems. If you have ever experienced blockages, being ignored or even rejected when trying to address this topic in your organization, know that you are not alone.
The main reason for this feeling, most of the time, is that we are speaking a very different language than that used by other departments or leaders within the company. Accessibility, for us, may be a basic principle, but it is not always understood or prioritized in the same way by other departments.
Exploring inclusive design and universal design
Today, when we talk about inclusive design, we are going beyond simply meeting the needs of people with disabilities. We are considering a much broader range of users, taking into account factors such as age, gender, abilities, mental state and specific conditions.
Universal design, on the other hand, seeks to create solutions that work for everyone, regardless of their particularities. It is a concept that eliminates the need for separate adaptations, integrating inclusion as part of the design from the beginning.