Design for accessibility: Design for everyone
Accessibility is about designing for everyone. It’s about creating digital experiences that adapt to every person, in every situation.
Why accessibility matters
Think about the last time you struggled to read your phone screen in bright sunlight, or couldn’t turn up the sound on a video in a quiet room. These temporary barriers are part of the accessibility story too.
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into effect in June 2025. The Act will improve the lives of millions of people living with disabilities by ensuring equal access to digital products and services. But the benefits go further – making content easier to use, more flexible, and ultimately more effective for everyone.
The EAA sets out common rules across the EU to make sure digital products and services are accessible to everyone. It means businesses will need to meet certain standards for their websites, media, and communication tools, while also ensuring compatibility with assistive technologies, like screen readers. Even though the UK hasn’t committed to adopting the legislation yet, aligning with these standards is a smart way to futureproof content, ensuring no one is left out.
Statistics show that 1 in 5 people rely on some form of assistive technology. And everyone experiences physical or environmental limitations at some point in their lives.
Designing for accessibility means anticipating these moments and ensuring your content, apps, and websites work for everyone.
What are the accessibility guidelines
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) outline four key principles that shape good accessible design. Content must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust (POUR).
- Perceivable: Information must be visible and audible.
- Operable: Every user should be able to navigate your site, including assistive technology users.
- Understandable: Keep content predictable and clear.
- Robust: Futureproof your designs by ensuring they work with current and future assistive technologies.
Using these POUR principles, we can transform accessibility from a checklist into a philosophy of inclusion.
Building a culture of accessibility
Accessible design isn’t about compromise, it’s about clarity. It’s about making design choices that welcome everyone in. Ways of doing this include:
- Incorporating accessibility from the start
- Having strong colour contrast and legible fonts
- Writing clear headings and descriptive links
- Ensuring keyboard navigation works everywhere
- Providing captions and transcripts for media
- Avoiding text inside graphics, where possible, or providing accessible versions for complex flow diagrams and infographics
- Testing everything (automated and human tests).
Use automated tools to help for accessibility checks, like Axe or WAVE. These will catch technical issues but don’t rely on them alone. Automated tools catch errors, but it’s people that find experiences or problems. We always build in human testing phases, to address problems from the start.
Accessibility isn’t a single designer’s job, it’s a team mindset. When everyone understands the “why” behind accessibility, it becomes second nature. Incorporating these tweaks are powerful ways of sharing content with everyone.
At Desq, we encourage our team to:
- Learn the basics of inclusive design
- Adapt workflows to integrate accessibility checks
- Evolve as technology and user needs change
- Share expertise openly within Desq, and to our clients.
This shared responsibility transforms accessibility from compliance into culture, which is beneficial for everyone.
Wrapping up
Accessibility design isn’t about following rules, it’s about removing barriers. It’s about giving people the dignity to interact, learn, and create on their own terms.When we design for accessibility, we’re not just meeting legal standards, we’re designing better experiences for everyone. Accessibility isn’t just good design — it’s better design.
Accessibility is essential for some, but useful for all.
