c/designing-for-accessibility

I finally understood why my color choices were a problem after a user emailed me

They said the light green text on my site's white background was impossible for them to read due to low contrast. I swapped it for a dark blue and it made a huge difference for everyone. Has anyone else had a simple fix that you totally missed before?

My city's bus app used to be a mess for my dad. They just added a high contrast mode and it's like night and day.

A user told me my form labels were too vague and it clicked

I got feedback on a sign-up form I built for a local library site. Someone using a screen reader said the label 'Enter info here' on every field was useless. They told me, 'I had no idea if I was typing my name or my email.' I changed all the labels to be specific, like 'Full name' and 'Email address'. It took me about an hour to fix across 15 forms. Now I test every form with my screen reader off. Has anyone else found a simple label change that made a big difference?

Serious question, should we always default to high-contrast color schemes?

My team's new app got praised by a low-vision tester but a coworker with Irlen syndrome said the stark black and white gave her headaches after 30 minutes. Where do you draw the line between contrast needs and sensory overload?

Spent $300 on a fancy color contrast checker and I'm not sold

I bought this software that promised to analyze my designs for color contrast issues and give me a full report. It cost about $300 for the license. Everyone in my circle was talking about how you need a tool like this to be serious about accessibility. But honestly, after using it for a few months, I feel like it made me lazy. I'd just run the scan, get a pass/fail, and move on without really thinking about why something failed or if the 'pass' was actually good in real use. I caught myself ignoring edge cases because the tool said it was fine. I think you learn more by manually checking with a few free browser extensions and, more importantly, by asking actual people to test things. Has anyone else found that relying too much on automated tools can backfire?

Noticed a great accessible sign at the Denver Botanic Gardens

They had a plant info plaque with raised, tactile graphics next to the braille, so you could feel the leaf shapes. It's a simple idea that helps way more people than just text. Anyone know other places that do tactile diagrams well?

Spent $300 on a 'universal' door handle that was impossible to open with one hand

I was trying to make a client's office door easier for people with limited grip strength. Bought this fancy lever handle that claimed to meet all the standards. The install was a pain, but the real kicker was when I tried it myself. You need to push down with your palm and pull at the same time, which is actually harder than a regular knob if you've got arthritis or just a full coffee cup. The client's assistant, who has carpal tunnel, couldn't open it at all. Had to eat the cost and swap it for a simpler, longer lever. What's the dumbest 'accessible' product you've seen that totally missed the point?

Showerthought: My color blind nephew couldn't read my chart at a family cookout.

I was showing off a data chart I made for a project at work, using red and green bars. My 10 year old nephew, who has red-green color blindness, asked me what the 'gray and gray' bars meant. That hit me... I'd been using those colors for years without a second thought. I looked it up right then and saw that about 8% of men have some form of color vision deficiency. Now I'm trying to learn better ways to show data, like using patterns or labels on the bars themselves. Has anyone else had a simple moment that showed a big gap in their design thinking?

Why does nobody talk about testing color contrast with a real book?

I checked my app's button colors against a printed color blindness guide from the library, and the fail rate was way higher than the online simulator showed. Has anyone found a better physical tool for this?

Rant: Picked a 16px font over a trendy 12px one for a cafe menu board last week.

The owner grumbled about 'wasted space' but a regular customer, who's older, just thanked me today for making it easy to read without her glasses, so what's a better way to convince clients that bigger type isn't just empty space?

Warning: I ignored a color contrast rule for a client in Portland and it backfired

My friend Sam, who has low vision, told me the blue and gray buttons on a site I designed last fall didn't have enough contrast. I argued it looked clean and modern, so I shipped it anyway. The client's feedback form got flooded with complaints from users who couldn't see the main call-to-action, and I had to redo the whole palette in a week. Has anyone else had a client project where ignoring basic accessibility advice caused a real problem?

Bought a $500 screen reader for testing and it changed how I see my own work

I remember a few years back, I thought checking color contrast was enough for accessibility. Then I spent about $500 on a JAWS license for my work computer, just to test our web forms. Hearing that robotic voice struggle with a button I coded was a real wake-up call (it kept reading 'submit' as 'sub-mit'). Now I run it on every project before we go live. Has anyone else had a tool show them a blind spot they didn't know they had?

My new oven's touchscreen is a real problem for my mom

I got a new oven with a flat glass touchscreen about three months ago. My mom, who has arthritis, tried to use it when she visited last week and just could not press the small buttons. She said, 'My fingers don't work on this thing.' It hit me that I bought a kitchen tool my own family can't use. I never thought about how touchscreens can be hard for people with shaky hands or poor grip. Has anyone found a good workaround for appliances like this, or brands that still use real knobs?

I used to skip alt text for decorative images on my site

A few years back, I figured if a picture was just for looks, screen readers could skip it. Then I watched a demo at a meetup in Austin where a user got confused by a missing description for a floral border. Now I always write a short alt tag, even if it's just 'decorative line', because that empty space can break the flow for someone. How do you all handle purely decorative graphics?

Unpopular opinion: I thought alt text for decorative images was a waste of time

A blind user on a test panel in Chicago last month told me our 'decorative' icon was the only clue they had for a critical form step. I was wrong. How do you decide what's truly decorative versus functional?

A color contrast check that should have been easy took me three days to fix

I was updating a client's website menu last week, just changing some button colors to match their new brand guide. The new green looked fine to me, and I ran it through a basic contrast checker against white text. It passed, so I moved on. The problem came when a user with low vision emailed support saying they couldn't read the menu text at all on their specific monitor settings. I went back and tested the same green against off-white backgrounds and lighter grays used elsewhere on the site, and it failed badly. I had to go back to the client, get approval for a darker shade, and then update every single instance across the site's components. What I thought was a 20 minute job turned into three full days of rework and testing. It really showed me that checking one color pair isn't enough, you have to test the whole context. Has anyone else had a simple color swap blow up like that?

PSA: I paid $500 for a 'color contrast checker' tool that my browser does for free

I saw an ad for this software that promised to analyze all my web designs for accessibility issues. The demo looked great, so I bought it. Turns out, the main feature is just checking color contrast ratios... which Chrome DevTools has built in for zero dollars. I feel like a total fool. Has anyone else been burned by a tool that just repackages a free feature?

I bumped up the font size on my website's forms and the error rate dropped by half

I run a small site for local event sign ups and kept getting emails from people mixing up their birth date and phone number fields. Turns out the labels were a tiny 12px and my mom, who wears reading glasses, pointed out she could barely read them. I changed all form labels to 16px minimum and made the input boxes a bit taller too. After a month, the number of support tickets about wrong info went from about 20 to just 10. Has anyone else found that just making text bigger was the simplest fix for a tricky problem?

My color contrast checker failed me at a local library presentation

I was showing a new website layout at the Springfield Public Library last Tuesday, and my go-to contrast tool said my green text on a blue background passed. But an older gentleman in the front row, Mr. Jenkins, politely raised his hand and said, 'Son, that's just a gray smudge to me.' I had forgotten to check for different types of color blindness. I had to quickly switch my laptop to a black and white filter on the spot to see what he meant. It was a real lesson in not just trusting a single tool. Has anyone else had a tool give them a false sense of security like that?

Vent: figuring out accessible focus indicators for a custom dropdown

I built a custom dropdown for a client's site and thought it was done. Then I tested it with a keyboard and screen reader, and the focus just vanished inside the menu. I spent about 4 hours trying to fix it, reading docs and testing different CSS rules. The issue was the container had `overflow: hidden` which was cutting off the focus outline. I had to change the structure to let the outline show and add a clear `:focus-visible` style. Has anyone else run into focus getting trapped by overflow settings?

Spent a whole afternoon trying to get a color contrast ratio right for a button

I was working on a client's website and their brand green just wasn't passing the contrast check against a white background. I thought it would be a quick fix, maybe 20 minutes. I ended up tweaking the hex code, checking it in three different tools, and going back and forth with the client for approval. It took over four hours to finally land on a shade that looked good and met the AA standard. Has anyone else had a simple color pick turn into a huge time sink?

Question about a chat with a friend who has low vision

My friend Mark, who has low vision, told me he always zooms to 200% on his phone, and that really stuck with me when I was checking my own app's layout last week, so what's the best way to test for that zoom level?

The new city hall in Springfield had these raised floor dots I'd never seen before...

They were at every door and stair, and a guide told me they're tactile paving for people with low vision, which made me think about how often we forget touch in digital design.

I spent 4 hours trying to fix a color contrast issue that was my own fault

I kept adjusting a button's background color in Figma, but it kept failing the contrast checker. Turns out I had a 10% opacity white layer over it the whole time, which was washing everything out. Has anyone else wasted time on a simple mistake like that?

I finally picked a color scheme for my aunt's website and it was a total mess

My aunt asked me to help with her small craft shop site, and I had to choose between a bright, pretty palette I liked or a high-contrast one. I went with the pretty one, using light pink text on a cream background. She called me two days later saying her friend with low vision couldn't read a single word. I switched it to dark blue on light gray, and she said it was like night and day. Anyone else have a simple rule for picking colors that actually work for everyone?