Accessibility

Accessibility is designing so that people with different vision, hearing, and motor abilities can use your product, which in practice makes it better for everyone.

In a picture, accessibility looks like the visible fixes: a focus ring you can actually see, so keyboard users know where they are, text and buttons with real contrast, a target big enough to hit on the first try, fields with labels instead of hints that vanish when you type. Those matter, and they're the part a screenshot can show.

Most of accessibility is invisible in a screenshot. Labels a screen reader can announce, alt text describing what's in each image, captions on video, an interface you can operate with the keyboard alone, animations you can turn off if motion makes you sick. None of it photographs, and all of it counts.

It pays off wider than the name suggests, because everyone borrows the accessible version: captions in a loud kitchen, bigger buttons on a bumpy train. The standard teams cite is WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; AA is the level most aim for, and contrast is the piece with real math behind it. Most of the work is ordinary design decisions made early instead of retrofitted late.

You'll also hear "a11y" (an a, eleven letters, a y), which looks like a password but is just how the field abbreviates itself online, and "inclusive design."

When you review a design, put the mouse away and tab through it. If you can't tell where you are on the screen, neither can anyone who navigates that way every day.