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
"Organizations that embed research into highest level decision making are the ones that innovate faster."
Jane DavisStrategic Shifts and Innovations in User Research: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities
March 11, 2025
"Working with these tools requires new workflows and checkpoints to validate and tweak the AI's output."
Jorge ArangoScale Smart: AI-Powered Content Organization Strategies
September 24, 2024
"We need to design for scalability, flexibility, accessibility, security, and performance."
Kit UngerTheme 2: Introduction
June 10, 2021
"Bees measure success not by how fast they work but by how well they prepare."
Mariesa LenzWhat Beekeeping Taught me about Product Teams
October 29, 2025
"We can make ourselves and our practice better because of what we’ve learned on our journeys of resilience."
Bria AlexanderTheme 1 Intro
September 23, 2024
"Many of ChatGPT's organizing themes are at the same level as the basic themes, which is confusing and inappropriate."
Weidan LiQualitative synthesis with ChatGPT: Better or worse than human intelligence?
June 4, 2024
"There’s no map or measure of what is good enough in hustle culture."
Luz BratcherThis Is a Talk for Tired People
June 10, 2022
"We didn’t have the maturity of the practice itself to specify the impacts of losing design ops until it happened."
Benjamin RealShowing the Value of DesignOps by Not Having a DesignOps Team
October 21, 2020
"It's really hard to have a conversation if you’ve got a pen and you’re writing and not really paying attention."
Uday Gajendar Louis RosenfeldDay 1 Welcome
June 4, 2024