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
"Using AI tools like Cursor to create React components from a well-documented Figma file helps close the gap between design and code."
Ryan Matthew Alex KurchevDesignOps without Boundaries: Building More with What You Have
September 10, 2025
"Stress is our nervous system going into a state of mobilization, preparing us to fight or flee a perceived threat."
Alla WeinbergHealing Toxic Stress
September 23, 2024
"Pilot projects with evangelists inside the company make ethnography manageable and successful."
Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian RohrerDiscussion
May 13, 2015
"Celebrate progress continuously and use OKRs as a learning process to evolve goals and strategies."
Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie GoldthorpeOKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
January 20, 2022
"Climate startups are a thing, and they really need UX expertise early on."
Louis Rosenfeld Matt Jones Olga Khroustaleva Michael Leggett Karol MunozDo you want to work on climate? (Climate UX Discussion Series)
November 15, 2023
"Assistive technology is a tool; we need to make sure we enable that tool to do its job."
Elana Chapman Li Wen Huang Divyen Sanganee Annabel WeinerGetting started with accessibility research
February 20, 2025
"We want people to gain calibrated levels of trust, not overtrust or undertrust."
Carol SmithOperationalizing Responsible, Human-Centered AI
June 7, 2023
"If you have a design ops team, they will be the ones managing the design ops roadmap, but if not, it falls back to people with the mindset coordinating amongst themselves."
Peter BoersmaHow to Define and Maintain a DesignOps Roadmap
October 3, 2023
"The best large language model is right under your nose: the human brain with 300,000 years of ancestral development."
Dr. Jamika D. Burge Nick Fine Alexandra Jayeun Lee Greg Nudelman Bo WangHow UX researchers can partner with (and not be replaced by) AI [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
August 31, 2023
