Meet the team: Grace
Posted on in Meet the team
Meet Grace, an Accessibility Specialist with a love of inclusive design, a passion for mentoring, and two extremely fluffy cats who consider themselves silent contributors to every project.
Her home is filled with music, cat hair, and the occasional badly-strummed ukulele, and she can often be found on morning calls bundled up in a jumper and hat, so fluffy her cats would be proud. Whether she’s deep in an accessibility assessment or sharing knowledge in a workshop, Grace brings insight, curiosity, and a strong belief that digital experiences should work for everyone.
With more than 15 years of experience across the tech industry—from design to front-end development—Grace has increasingly focused her work on accessibility standards and testing. She has assessed a wide range of digital products, including Figma designs for NHS services as part of GDS assessments, detailed code reviews and ongoing consultancy for public sector organisations such as the Climate Disclosure Project, and accessibility audits for many well-known brands across websites and native apps.
Alongside her assessment work, Grace is passionate about helping others grow. She regularly delivers training talks and workshops, and she mentors aspiring developers on accessibility fundamentals through Frontend Mentor, supporting the next generation of inclusive practitioners.
Grace’s career path has been anything but linear. Before finding her place in accessibility, she moved through a remarkable range of roles, including in hotels and retail, where she learned the value of clear communication and empathy. She spent time in journalism, copywriting, and public relations, discovering how to tell stories and make information understandable. Later, estate agency, design, and front-end development gave her a deeper appreciation of how people interact with both physical and digital spaces. She even took a detour into the mountains for a season as a ski instructor!
While she’s tried on many hats, accessibility, inclusion, and teaching are where she feels most at home, and where her varied background comes together beautifully.
What’s the one thing you wish you’d known when you started learning about accessibility?
I wish I'd realised sooner that accessibility isn't just a concern for developers; it starts with design and user experience (UX). When I began my career, I focused on usability but mistakenly thought that any design could be made accessible later in the development phase.
It took me a long time to fully grasp the significant impact my initial design choices had on making a digital product inclusive for people with disabilities. Had I familiarised myself with accessible UI patterns earlier, my designs would have been inherently more inclusive and better documented, which would in turn make developers' and testers' jobs of supporting accessibility much simpler.
The other major realisation I wish I'd had is that accessibility isn't always black and white, but requires nuance in communication. .
Grace Snow
Early on, I was stuck in a rigid "right and wrong" mindset. This, combined with my passion for inclusion, often led me to communicate brusquely, which could put people off or make accessibility feel like an impossible task.
Now, I focus on learning to communicate more gently, prioritising the highest-impact accessibility barriers, and providing balanced feedback that encourages progress. Most people genuinely want to build inclusive products; the key is helping them harness that intention without creating feelings of guilt or overwhelm.
What’s your top accessibility tip?
My top tip is to embrace the mindset of progress over perfection and learn to prioritise.
Accessibility can seem overwhelming, but you don't have to fix every issue on every page on day one. Instead, focus your efforts on the most significant barriers that exclude the largest number of users, such as ensuring keyboard navigation is robust or fixing critical colour contrast issues. Make small, sustainable improvements that compound over time. Continuous, measured progress is far more valuable than aiming for unattainable perfection, which can lead to burnout or inaction.
Secondly, don't be afraid to redesign when a "fix" isn't enough—especially after testing with assistive technology users. While meeting WCAG success criteria is essential, sometimes true accessibility requires going beyond the letter of the law and following those "best practice" recommendations as well.
If you realise a pattern or component fundamentally doesn't work well for people who use screen readers, magnification or keyboards, or those with cognitive impairments, don't try to bandage it. Have the courage to go back and simplify, rethink, or even completely redesign the component. This commitment to user experience is what separates merely compliant products from truly accessible ones.
What’s your top accessibility resource?
For those working directly in product and engineering roles, the Understanding WCAG 2.2 Docs and the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) Patterns are severely under-utilised and are my top technical resources. The Understanding documents move beyond the success criteria to explain why each rule exists and how to meet it, offering crucial context for developers and testers. Similarly, the APG provides practical, tested examples of how to build common accessible component patterns, which is invaluable for ensuring your interactive elements work correctly with assistive technologies.
Familiarity with these patterns helps designers and developers, in particular, gain a shared understanding of which patterns to follow and how different designs can be translated into accessible code. And you don't need to learn it all at once; design and engineering teams (including managers and product owners) can set a manageable goal, such as reviewing one pattern or understanding a document per week, to build their practical knowledge.
For anyone who is new to the field or looking for a foundational understanding of accessibility, I cannot recommend the W3C's Introduction to Accessibility course enough. I believe everyone in the tech industry, regardless of their specific role, should take this training. It provides a vital, empathetic view of how people with disabilities interact with digital products and services day-to-day, which is critical for moving beyond checkbox compliance. This comprehensive empathy-building is the best way to foster a truly inclusive culture within your organisation.
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