Designing for accessibility is becoming part of the everyday job. But does that mean creativity has to take a back seat? When I first started working on accessible design, I’ll admit my first thought wasn’t particularly inspiring: Large 'Janet-and-John' text, everything must be giant and layouts must be orderly. Design that looked, well, a bit meh! And I suspect I’m not alone...
By Jodie Cole
28/09/26
I first encountered design for accessibility here at Naked through projects for public sector organisations, and increasingly through charities too, where public funding often comes with accessibility requirements. That’s when it stopped being something I knew about in theory and became a genuine part of the design process, and I quickly realised there’s a lot more to it than just making things bigger!
There’s a lot going on underneath the design
When you’re creating an accessible PDF, you’re not just designing the pages. You’re also designing the structure underneath them. Headings need to be properly tagged. Contents pages need to work. Images need alt descriptions. The reading order needs to make sense. Titles and bookmarks need setting up. And then the finished document needs testing to make sure it actually works with assistive technology.
That gets rather interesting when you’re dealing with a 100-page report containing chapters, maps, charts, tables, infographics, pull quotes, imagery and multiple columns. You can make something look completely right visually and still discover that the underlying document isn't working properly. And that takes knowledge, time and quite a lot of patience.
The accessibility = boring problem
I think designing with accessibility in mind has picked up a bit of a visual stigma: Big type. High contrast. Lack of colour. Functional layouts. Yes, these things can all be important. But somewhere along the way, I think we’ve started to associate accessible with boring.
Interestingly, the UK Government's own accessibility guidance challenges this idea, asking whether things like good colour contrast, legible typography and logical layouts are actually “good design principles applicable to everyone and not just those with access needs?” Any descent designer can't argue with that - good contrast, clear hierarchy and legible typography is most definately good design practice and, well, common sense. So perhaps accessibility and good design aren't two different things after all.
The rules are the starting point
I suspect there’s much more creative opportunity here than people realise. The guidelines are the constraints; our job as designers is to work out what we can still do within them. That might mean rethinking a colour palette, introducing complementary colours, choosing typography more carefully or finding a different visual language.
The GOV.UK guidance (shown in their posters above) gives a good sense of the practical considerations involved, from colour contrast and typography to layout and how information is structured. They’re important rules, but they’re a starting point, not the end of the creative process.
That’s why accessibility needs to be considered right from the beginning. Trying to retrofit it afterwards can be painful, and will nearly always mean doing the job twice. The same goes for branding. If your colours don’t provide enough contrast, you may need to introduce alternatives later just to make the brand work across different applications.
Accessibility is a communication issue
In my head accessibility has simply become a communication issue. I’d actually rather talk about good design that works for more people. If someone can’t navigate a document, understand its hierarchy, read the text clearly or access it using assistive technology, then we’ve designed something that isn’t doing its job for everyone it needs to reach. And that’s not just an accessibility problem, it’s a communication problem. The Government’s guidance makes a similar point too - that designing with accessibility in mind can help create better services for everyone, whatever their access needs. (GOV.UK)
And there’s a commercial argument too. Businesses spend a huge amount of money communicating through branding, websites, campaigns, reports and presentations - both digitally and in print. So if people can't properly access, navigate or understand that communication, you've potentially spent money creating something that isn't working for part of your intended audience.
Recent UK Government research into private-sector products and services found disabled people can experience barriers at different stages of the customer journey, from researching and buying through to using products and dealing with customer service. Adobe makes a similar case from a business perspective, highlighting potential benefits including improved productivity and reaching larger markets through accessible documents.
Accessibility shouldn’t kill creativity
This is the bit all designers should be most interested in. There’s a danger that accessibility becomes a list of things we can’t do, but instead it should be seen as a creative challenge: Here are the rules - now let’s see what we can do with them.
If you simply take an existing brand and apply a set of accessibility rules to it, you could strip a lot of its personality away. But if you build accessibility into the thinking from the start, you can rethink the colour palette, typography, layout and visual language.
Foresight means you can still create something that grabs attention, that's distinctive. You can still have fun with design. The constraint shouldn’t kill the creativity. It should make us think harder.
So, does accessible design have to look accessible?
I don’t think so. The dream is actually to create something where you can’t tell it’s been designed with accessibility in mind. It’s a bit like good accessibility in a building. You don’t necessarily notice the thoughtful doorways, routes and access points because they’ve simply been designed into the building from the start. They’re not an afterthought or an awkward addition, they’re just part of how the place works. And that’s where I think accessible design should get to - becoming part of good design, rather than something bolted on afterwards.
Accessibility isn't going away, nor should it. But neither should creativity.
If you’ve got a brand, campaign or project that needs to be accessible without losing its personality, that’s a design challenge we’d love to get our teeth into.
