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
"Design thinking at IBM is not just for designers; it’s how we want all 380,000 people to think about problems."
Adam CutlerPeople + Places + Practices = Outcomes
June 8, 2016
"DPMs can get overwhelmed quickly because they want to say yes to everything; managers must help say no."
Courtney KaplanTaking it to the next level: Career paths in DesignOps
November 8, 2018
"No assistive technology user uses default settings; we spend years customizing everything to work for us."
Sam ProulxSUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
December 9, 2021
"The international design government community started by reaching out individually via Twitter to people in governments around the world."
Kara KaneCommunities of Practice for Civic Design
April 7, 2022
"Prioritizing across a complex ecosystem of business owners requires deep alignment between product and UX or the product never moves forward."
Laureen Kattan Julie KimCentering Patients and Clinicians in a Complex Government Ecosystem
November 29, 2023
"The cargo cult story teaches us that form without understanding is not enough; blindly following process won’t deliver results."
Alastair SimpsonDebunking the Myths of Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
October 24, 2019
"Concept maps are the best tool for managing complex webs of objects and relationships in a system."
Robert ReimannTaming Design Complexity with UX Models
June 8, 2017
"By starting to categorize risk in detail, you naturally lead to better prompts and better evals."
Peter Van DijckHands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge
October 15, 2025
"Being a formal leader is harder in many ways, but you have more leverage to make change."
Kristin TaylorBuilding Bridges Across Organizational Silos
November 18, 2022
