Summary
Incorporating accessibility can be seen as a daunting task, especially for products that have already been released. Alexis Lucio, Senior Accessibility Lead at Splunk, will share her journey in making accessibility a first-class citizen within Splunk Design System. Topics include: how to advocate for accessibility, utilizing use cases to optimize design and dev, how to utilize user input, and ideas on how to collaborate with cross-functional partners.
Key Insights
-
•
Accessibility should be integrated early ('shift left') in the design and development process to reduce tech debt and remediation costs.
-
•
Automation tools catch about 30% of accessibility defects and cannot replace human audits and discernment.
-
•
Accessibility is often mistaken as limiting creativity, but it is actually a driver of innovation and inclusivity.
-
•
Unique naming for components like message bars is critical to avoid confusion for assistive technologies when multiple instances exist.
-
•
Breadcrumb navigation must not rely on color alone to convey meaning; it should be accessible through keyboard and screen readers and consider interactive behaviors.
-
•
Documenting accessibility decisions in design systems helps maintain consistency and educates users of the system.
-
•
Accessibility requires ongoing education and advocacy to get buy-in from diverse teams including designers, engineers, and product managers.
-
•
Small incremental changes to accessibility are better than no changes; it’s an ongoing journey rather than a one-time fix.
-
•
Accessibility levels range from inaccessible to legally compliant, usable, and ultimately innovative; compliance alone does not guarantee good UX.
-
•
Cross-functional collaboration and shared resources like accessibility one-pagers and bug-triaging spreadsheets improve scalability of accessibility efforts.
Notable Quotes
"Accessibility is innovation and this statement could potentially be some unchecked ableism."
"Automation only catches maybe 30% of all your a11y defects and even then we still receive a lot of false positives."
"I help you unlearn and relearn patterns so that you can build better products."
"If you’d rather exclude a group of people from using your product than do accessibility, then think about the impact you’re making."
"You can have a single page that’s got inaccessible, compliant, and accessible experiences all in one."
"No design system will ever be fully accessible because new features and permutations are always being introduced."
"Accessibility is a key component of user experience that has been neglected and requires specialists to close the gap."
"Small incremental changes are better than no changes at all from both the process and technical view."
"We’ve been taught to build fast and break things, and we often play accessibility on the back burner."
"Unique names for components like message bars are crucial, especially when multiple instances are shown at once."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Being data informed is not data driven—blindly following data can kill you, like the Challenger explosion."
Adam ThomasSurvival Metrics – Making Change in a Fast, Data-Informed, and Politically Safe Way
December 6, 2022
"Design ops kind of formed itself around me or alongside me as I was trying to solve a set of problems that executives have."
Peter MerholzThe Mysterious Case of the Missing UX Career Path
August 25, 2022
"Knowledge multiplies the more it is shared; enabling others makes your insights stronger, not your position weaker."
Jemma Ahmed Steve Carrod Chris Geison Dr. Shadi Janansefat Christopher NashDemocratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
July 24, 2024
"Meetings tell us what kind of conversations we are having and what kind of conversations we are not having."
Alla WeinbergHow to Build and Scale Team Safety
January 8, 2024
"Design makes the abstract tangible by transforming concepts into something with form, shape, and expression."
Christian BasonInnovating With People: Unleashing the Potential of Civic Design
December 8, 2021
"Markdown is very concise and useful, and GitHub can render it into human-readable, nicely formatted pages."
Bryce Benton[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
June 4, 2024
"People’s ability to cope with information complexity isn’t increasing exponentially, so we need to find the perfect innovation space."
Kelly GotoEmotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy
May 13, 2015
"Collaboration helps you look at problems from different angles, which makes your work more robust and nuanced."
Roberta Dombrowski Sam Duong WoloszynskiMaking Research a Team Sport
March 11, 2022
"Have you just asked what scares us or keeps us up at night? Those repeated fears highlight the risks we need to avoid."
Christian Crumlish Wendy Johansson Rich Mironov Aditi Ruiz Adam ThomasAfternoon Insights Panel
December 6, 2022
