Web designers, UX designers and developers alike have, as a whole, historically underestimated (or not even considered) the opportunities that designing for accessibility provides for their disciplines.

In a talk delivered last year in London, accessibility consultant Jon Gibbins pushed for a greater understanding and appreciation for empathy in design and development, and the fundamental role accessibility should and could play in creating digital experiences.

“My journey towards accessibility has made it as important as security or performance or writing documentation,” Jon explained. “All of those things are things you don’t necessarily have to do, but you wouldn’t release an app that wasn’t secure; you wouldn’t not think about performance.”

Thanks to regulation, developers are aware of building for accessibility, but there is still a strong chance that if you ask someone who has worked for a company producing anything digital (apps, websites, experiences, tools), accessibility has not been a central concern, let alone something that gets people excited about their product. Building for accessibility is still seen as a requirement and not an opportunity.

For designers, this norm is even more entrenched.

Awwwards — ‘The awards of design, creativity and innovation on the internet’ — is an established online design community that runs conferences, holds awards, connects agencies with clients, and celebrates web design every day with ‘sites of the day’. It prides itself on the credibility of its open source judging system, with websites judged according to five criteria: Design, Usability, Creativity, Content, and Mobile. Despite posting interviews and content occasionally referencing accessibility, the fact it doesn’t make the cut in terms of criteria is telling. Even if it is included in ‘usability’, accessibility’s importance and potential merits its own focus for such a major industry website.

Ironically, even a site that Awwwards feature, learn-accessibility.org, a site which teaches the fundamentals of accessibility design, has some obvious limitations, especially for the blind (‘Accessibility’ as a heading is almost invisible, even to someone with average sight). The fact that the site was nominated for its design shows a lack of understanding by judges on the basics of accessible web design.

It is easy to glide over various winners of an Awwward and quickly identify that accessibility is not a central concern for much of that particular design community.

Why does accessibility not receive the attention it deserves? Because people are not yet aware of what potential it promises for designers, businesses, developers, writers and everyone involved in producing digital tools. Unfortunately, calling for empathy as a central means to overhaul digital development may not cut it, but highlighting the opportunities this area of production presents those working within tech may be a more effective way to create change.

Within the UX community, it seems like many are fighting their own fights and disregarding what accessibility could mean as a UX designer.

Rahel Bailie spoke recently in London on an important topic: the pivotal role content plays in successful UX design.

While content should be fluid and reflect the shifting needs of a user, Rahel saw design as something that benefits from less tinkering once it is established.

“When design is set, it is actually comforting to users because they know where to find things,” she argued. While Rahel focuses on content in her work, it is interesting that this idea of usability is rarely discussed in relation to accessibility.

Rahel focused on content as a core means for promoting “comprehension” for users, and yet the idea of comprehension through accessibility is a long way from being a prominent part of the conversation.

The application of accessibility design is still rudimentary, with article titles like ‘Designing for accessibility is not that hard’ being favoured by Google over more robust discussions. While articles like this are helpful in outlining the basics of web accessibility, they don’t do enough to communicate that designers and developers are missing out on an entire sphere of digital production, one with countless paths to follow and exercise/develop their knowledge and skills.

Some of those who work in accessibility, especially accessibility consultants, purposely create very simple personal websites in a pursuit to highlight how an accessible website should function. Unfortunately, they harm their cause by not championing various ways design and development can work together to pursue inclusive digital design and expand their disciplines into new areas.