Bridging the Gap: Why Good Designers Create Inaccessible Websites and How to Fix It

Designers are good people—they care about usability and inclusion. Yet every day, people struggle with websites that are hard to read, navigate, or interact with. How can this be? The disconnect between intention and outcome has a deep-rooted cause: designers are expected to remember an overwhelming amount of guidelines, from visual design to accessibility. This Q&A explores the reasons behind this paradox and offers a practical path forward. Let’s start with a fundamental question.

Why Do Well-Intentioned Designers Create Websites That Exclude People?

No designer wakes up wanting to exclude users. Yet exclusion happens because the sheer volume of best practices—usability, accessibility, responsive design, performance—overwhelms even the most dedicated professional. Consider the original article’s observation: “Designers are good people. I have never heard a designer say, ‘I don’t care if somebody can’t read this text.’” The problem is not malice but memory. Accessibility guidelines alone fill entire books, and designers cannot recall every detail while sketching a layout. As a result, inclusive considerations often slip through the cracks. The core issue isn’t a lack of caring—it’s a lack of tools that make inclusive design obvious at the moment of creation.

Can a Badly Designed Bus Timetable Truly Be a Matter of Life and Death?

Yes, and the original article makes this point powerfully. Aral Balkan’s essay This Is All There Is argues that nearly every design decision can affect life and death events. For example, a bus timetable app that displays confusing schedules might cause a person to miss a loved one’s fifth birthday party (a life event) or fail to catch the last bus to say goodbye to a dying grandmother (a death event). These are not hypothetical extremes—they are real consequences of poor usability. Accessibility isn’t just about compliance; it’s about enabling people to participate in the moments that matter most. That’s why the stakes are so high, and why better design heuristics are essential.

What Is the Core Problem Designers Face When Trying to Be Inclusive?

The core problem is information overload. Designers must juggle countless topics: visual hierarchy, color contrast, keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, cognitive load, and more. The original article states, “There’s too much to recall.” Lists of guidelines from A List Apart and other sources are excellent, but they pile up. A single designer cannot internalize all of them while also staying current with new devices, browsers, and user needs. This cognitive burden leads to unintentional exclusion—not because designers are indifferent, but because the human brain can only hold so much active information. The solution, as we’ll see next, lies in shifting from recall to recognition for the designers themselves.

How Can Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics Help Designers Think About Accessibility?

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics, dating from the mid-1990s, remain a cornerstone of UX design. Heuristic #6, “Recognition rather than Recall,” originally applied to users: information needed to use a design should be visible or easily retrievable. The original article proposes a clever twist: apply that same principle to designers. Make the information needed to produce an accessible design visible or easily retrievable at the moment of creation. For instance, instead of expecting designers to recall every color contrast ratio, embed a live contrast checker in their design tool. This transforms abstract guidelines into tangible, real-time cues—helping designers recognize issues without memorizing them.

What Is the Proposed Solution to Make Accessibility Easier for Designers?

The proposal is to rethink how accessibility guidance is delivered. Instead of relying on designers to recall dozens of rules, we can build systems that surface the right information at the right time. For example:

• Integrate accessibility checks directly into design software (e.g., Figma plugins that flag low contrast).
• Use pattern libraries and component frameworks that are accessible by default.
• Create design systems that include accessibility annotations (e.g., “this button needs focus outline”).

As the original article suggests, “Let’s make it easier to recognise accessibility issues while we’re designing.” This approach, inspired by Nielsen’s heuristics, reduces cognitive load. The book A Web for Everyone by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery offers further practical strategies. The goal is to make inclusive design the path of least resistance.

Are Designers to Blame If Their Websites Are Inaccessible?

No, designers are not to blame. They are caught in a system that expects them to be experts in everything—visual design, code, psychology, accessibility—without providing the infrastructure to succeed. The original article emphasizes that designers are “good people.” The real culprit is the lack of integrated support. Instead of pointing fingers, we should ask: How can we change the tools and processes so that accessibility becomes automatic? Answering that question is the homework the original article proposes. By shifting responsibility from individual memory to systemic design aids, we can finally align designers’ good intentions with the inclusive outcomes users deserve.