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As an integral part of user experience, accessibility has become a priority when developing any kind of software or digital product. Besides being a necessity, however, crafting accessible experiences actually benefits the overall user experience and usability of a product.
In this article, we’ll take a look at how prioritizing accessibility from the very beginning of design and development actually streamlines the entire process and produces results that better address user pain points and expectations. We’ll also look at a few best practices for ensuring that accessibility is prioritized.
Better experience for all users
One of the most common misconceptions about digital accessibility used to be that it only benefits users with disabilities, or even that accessible design can negatively impact the overall user experience.
In reality, however, baking accessibility into the design and development process actually leads to an improvement in the experience for all users.
Accessibility doesn’t just cover cases such as using a screen reader to access content. It also includes crucial aspects of the user experience, such as color contrast, clear content structure and readability.
This has become a bit of a cliche, but that’s because it’s true: we all need accessible experiences from time to time, whether we know it or not. It might be due to something as simple as harsh sunlight or a lack of focus because of busyness. Following accessibility best practices results in more robust digital products with an overall more cohesive experience.
Critically, if you tag on accessibility features later on in the project once you’ve already implemented UX features, there’s a chance these late changes may negatively affect the overall user experience. By prioritizing accessibility from the get go, you minimize the risks of that.
Less time & rework
More often than not, skipping accessibility early on in a project doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to avoid it completely – you’ll just need to retroactively add at least the essential accessibility features, which will likely require a lot of refactoring and result in notable scope changes.
One of the main reasons for wanting to skip accessibility is the belief that it takes additional time and resources for something that isn’t key to specific business objectives.
Paradoxically, though, scope changes and last-minute refactoring due to ignoring accessibility will actually take much longer to do properly, while likely resulting in a poorer user experience. It’s just more efficient to treat accessibility as an indispensable element of digital product development.
Legal compliance
Because of the prevalence of digital experiences becoming a typical part of daily life, we’re seeing a rise of laws and regulations that necessitate digital accessibility in a similar way as physical accessibility.
By following them from the start of the design and development process, you make sure that the product you’re building is as compliant as possible, and that no future UX changes introduce major compliance problems.
W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an excellent resource for country-specific accessibility policies as well as general guidelines for web accessibility.
For businesses operating in the EU and/or with EU customers, the most important policy to keep in mind is the European Accessibility Act (EAA). It was originally established in 2019, but compliance with the requirements in the act is mandatory as of 28 June 2025.
While accessibility should be a must for any website, application or another digital product, those who should be particularly mindful of accessible experiences are providers of public services (such as government organizations), and providers of goods or services that provide digital access to a physical location or service (such as restaurants that enable online ordering).
Tips & best practices
One of the key considerations for accessible design and development is to treat user experience as functional, not just as aesthetic. Not only is aesthetics very subjective, it can even hinder usability (think inaccessible color contrasts that “look good” to a designer without any kind of vision impairment).
Ideally, accessibility needs to be given as high a priority as security and performance; it is, after all, a vital element of a good user experience. To ensure everyone is on the same page about the importance of accessibility, provide training and support other learning initiatives, from longer courses to practical team talks about the key role and benefits of accessible development on a specific project with tangible business benefits.
Apart from following accessibility guidelines when creating digital experiences, it’s also crucial to properly test for accessibility, much like you would with security and performance.
There are some extra considerations when testing for accessibility, such as using screen reading technology to determine how visually impaired users interact with a website/app and access content. Automated accessibility tests can uncover a lot of issues, but they absolutely need to be accompanied by thorough manual testing like this.
The best results come from tests with “real” users, i.e. people with actual disabilities for which you want to test. If that’s not possible, have designers and developers perform tests using screen readers and other assistive technologies, as well as test in specific conditions to check for things such as color contrast and font eligibility.
Conclusion
Times when digital accessibility was an optional UX add-on are long gone now. Companies need to embrace this reality and create digital experiences that serve all their users equally by making accessibility a key element of the design and development process.
In order to comply with latest guidelines and legislation on digital accessibility, deliver more cohesive experiences to users, and avoid unnecessary rework, you should provide adequate learning opportunities and resources, as well as develop a thorough testing framework which combines manual and automated accessibility tests.
In case you lack in-house accessibility experts or need a few additional developers to make your digital experiences shine, reach out to us and let’s discuss how we can help you out.
