Why Good Designers Create Inaccessible Websites and How to Fix It

Accessibility is the cornerstone of good web design, yet even well-intentioned designers often produce sites that exclude users. This article explores the paradox of good designers making inaccessible websites and proposes a practical solution rooted in Jakob Nielsen's usability heuristics. By shifting the focus to recognition rather than recall, designers can more easily identify and address accessibility issues during the design process.

Why do designers who care about accessibility still create inaccessible websites?

Despite good intentions, designers are human and can only hold so much information in their heads. The sheer volume of guidelines—from visual design to accessibility, interaction patterns, and coding standards—is overwhelming. This cognitive overload means designers often forget critical accessibility requirements, especially under tight deadlines. The problem isn't a lack of care; it's the inability to recall every relevant rule at the right moment. As the original article notes, designers never say they don't care if someone can't read text, yet inaccessible designs still emerge because the right knowledge isn't immediately available when decisions are made.

Why Good Designers Create Inaccessible Websites and How to Fix It

How can accessibility failures affect real life and death?

Accessibility isn't just about convenience—it can have life-altering consequences. In Aral Balkan's essay "This Is All There Is," he highlights how even a simple bus timetable app can determine whether someone makes a life event (like a daughter's fifth birthday) or a death event (like saying goodbye to a dying grandmother). A poorly designed interface might cause a user with low vision to miss the bus, altering their entire day. Accessibility barriers don't just frustrate users; they can exclusion from critical experiences. Every design choice carries weight, and ignoring accessibility means potentially harming real people.

What is the core problem: too much to recall?

The heart of the issue is that designers are expected to remember an impossible amount of information. From A List Apart articles to accessibility guidelines like WCAG, plus UX heuristics, content strategy, and development constraints—the mental load is immense. This leads to what the original piece calls "too much to recall." While we know that not everyone sees, hears, thinks, or moves the same way, putting that knowledge into practice consistently is hard. The solution isn't to memorize everything but to make accessibility information accessible during the design process.

How can heuristics help designers remember accessibility?

Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics, particularly heuristic #6—Recognition rather than Recall—offer a way forward. Originally applied to users, we can invert it for designers: make the information required to produce accessible designs visible or easily retrievable when needed. By integrating accessibility checks into existing workflows (e.g., design systems, checklists, or browser plugins), designers can recognize issues without relying on memory. For example, a visual cue in a design tool could flag insufficient color contrast, prompting correction before the design is finalized. This reduces cognitive load and increases consistency.

What practical step is proposed: recognition over recall for designers?

The proposal is straightforward: treat accessibility as a set of recognition-based prompts, not a list to memorize. Borrowing from Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery's "A Web for Everyone," designers can create and use checklists that are embedded in their design environment. For instance, a Figma plugin could highlight text that falls below contrast ratios, or a card sort activity could test navigation clarity. The goal is to surface accessibility requirements at the moment of decision, making it easier to comply without extra mental effort. This approach shifts the burden from the designer's brain to the design system—a more sustainable fix.

How does this proposal align with existing design practices?

This proposal doesn't ask designers to learn new rules; it asks them to embed existing rules into tools they already use. Heuristics like "Recognition rather than Recall" already guide good UX for users; applying the same principle to the designer's experience creates a feedback loop. For example, a design system that automatically checks for semantic HTML or ARIA labels during prototyping helps designers catch issues early. This method respects the designer's limited attention and leverages their existing workflows. It's not a revolution—it's a smarter application of what we already know about human cognition, applied to the creators who build our digital world.

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