Design and development posts

By applying accessibility considerations to the building blocks of your web content you can create digital products that everyone can use.

Our Accessible building blocks for web video series introduces key accessibility considerations for some of the most widely used elements on websites - from headings to images, links, buttons, and form fields.

Our Common accessibility misconceptions series sheds light on many misunderstood aspects of accessibility.

Testing for accessibility is often misunderstood. Teams either overestimate what tools can do, underestimate their own role, or assume testing is something that happens once only, at completion of the development process.

In this post we tackle some of the most frequent misconceptions about accessibility testing.

For many organisations and digital teams, knowing how to start implementing accessibility and how to sustain it over time isn't always straightforward. Teams often wonder who is responsible, which tools to use, and when accessibility should be considered.

Most people working in digital are aware of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and know they can help make digital products work for everyone. However, the way the guidelines are discussed often leads to mixed assumptions about what they cover and how they should be used.

Screen readers are familiar to many in digital, but how they work in practice can be less clear. In this post, we shed some light on the topic.

The Inclusive Design Principles (IDP) were first published in 2016 by myself, Ian Pouncey, Léonie Watson, and Heydon Pickering. We felt that while the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) set out what to do to meet technical compliance, many design decisions fall outside the scope of WCAG but still determine whether an interface is inclusive, usable, and welcoming.

The principles were developed to plug that gap with people-centred guidance that helps teams make better design decisions without adding unnecessary complexity. In this post, we'll look at who the principles are for, what they can be applied to, how they help people, and how you can integrate them into your own practices.

In most organisations, design documentation often includes annotations, but accessibility-specific ones are still rare. That’s a missed opportunity. Annotating designs for accessibility helps everyone involved understand what needs to be built, tested, and maintained.

More and more organisations are conscious about the environmental impact of their products - both physical or digital - and are trying to make positive changes.

Applying inclusive best practices when designing digital products results not only in more accessible products but also in more sustainable ones.

This post provides an overview of common assistive technologies (AT) used by people with seeing, hearing, moving, and thinking disabilities. It also explains what adaptive strategies are, and how these approaches work together to support accessibility and inclusive experiences.