The Accessibility Design Career Path

The need for designers who specialize in accessibility has grown in demand as companies realize that inclusive design is the right thing to do and that accessible digital products outperform competitors by 50 percent.

That’s because inclusive products benefit everyone not just the roughly one billion people considered disabled worldwide.

In this meetup, we discussed what accessibility means, how designers can include it in their practice, and how to pursue this specialization as a career path.

Our panelists included:

• Mali Holmes, Accessibility Designer at CVS Health
• Kim Berg, QA Analyst, Human Experience Design for BankMobile
• Karim Merchant, Accessibility Product Designer at Dell
• Grace Tay, Senior Full-Stack Web Developer, accessibility certified, Ohio State University.

Resources mentioned:

• WCAG based guidelines for design
• Chrome tool helps developers make websites more color blind friendly – The Verge
• https://www.w3.org/WAI/
• Microsoft Accessibility Insights: Accessibility Insights
• Should I Use An Accessibility Overlay?
• Kill Your Personas. How persona spectrums champion real… | by Margaret P | Microsoft Design | Medium
• https://teachaccess.github.io/accessibility-skills-hiring-toolkit/roles/ux-interaction-designer
• About the Toolkit | Teach Access Accessibility Skills Hiring Toolkit
• Introduction – Accessibility – Human Interface Guidelines – Apple Developer