What Makes a Good Accessibility Designer?
Someone asked me recently what skills a designer needs. Since I work in the accessibility space, I started thinking about how the question translates to designers who tackle accessibility every day.
Here’s what I came up with that covers both designers and accessibility designers. Each skill builds on the previous one.
For any designer:
Be Curious
A designer solves problems. To do that, you need to understand how systems work. To gain an understanding of systems, you need to be curious. Unintimidated by roadblocks and unknowns. Even excited and energized by them. This provides fuel for your work. Always ask why.
Assume Nothing
Even if you’re curious, you can still make assumptions. Try to avoid this. A good designer integrates what they think they know. Use it to power your curiosity. A lot of design work happens when you’re trying to understand people, systems or environments. Embrace that.
Ask Questions in the Open
You can be curious and challenge your own assumptions without asking questions in an open, transparent way. That means asking them where others can see them, think about them and try to answer them. Magic happens when one questions spawns an answer and three more questions. A question for a designer is like a hammer for a carpenter.
For those who do accessibility work:
Get the Basics Right
The majority of the accessibility work that happens on a regular basis falls into getting the basics right. Diving into accessibility can prove intimidating because it can be both technical and contextual. Much of the basics end up with straightforward answers though. If you spend time on nailing the basics, you’re ahead of 80 percent of the designers out there.
Don’t Aim for Perfection
Accessibility work has two main goals:
Make the interface work for the widest possible audience, starting with people with disabilities.
Make the interface better than before.
That’s how I’ve approached the work in the decade-plus I’ve done it. If you aim for perfection, nothing may happen that makes an impact. The second point helps you skirt the desire and tendency to make your changes perfect. Remember, accessibility is another design constraint. And constraints often lead to compromises and that’s expected.
Learn Accessibility in Layers
Once you grasp the basics, where do you go from there? The possibilities abound. Take a layered approach. This might mean learning about accessibility laws in one go then focusing on something technical, like ARIA. You might look at your current project and ask, “What do I need to learn here that I don’t yet know?” Learn that. Repeat it on the next project. You’ll feel less overwhelmed than taking a giant course and trying to apply what was valuable.
Conclusion
I realize the skills I’ve advocated for here qualify as soft rather than hard. I’m saying “Learn these approaches,” instead of “Learn this software and these techniques.” The hard skills will evolve as you move through your career. The soft skills stick with you for the long haul.