Accessibility is often discussed in terms of standards, tools, and compliance. We talk about WCAG success criteria, automated testing platforms, color contrast ratios, semantic markup, and remediation plans. These all play a key role in creating an accessible experience, but true accessibility is much more human-centered.
At last week’s DigiCol Accessibility Summit, I noticed a common theme throughout many presentations that echoes my opening paragraph: accessibility is a system, not a single task that occurs in a vacuum. While each session focused on a specific subject like AI, remediation, and testing, every presenter also showed how accessibility as a system was at work within their specific topic and area of expertise:
- Tools detect patterns. People experience systems. ~ Designing for real people: What AI Can’t See and Why It Matters
- Sustainable accessibility happens when people, processes, and technology work together. ~ Beyond the dashboard: What automated accessibility misses in higher education (When people, processes, and technology interact and work together toward a common purpose, they form a system.)
- Making hidden work visible helps manage expectations and frames accessibility as a systemic challenge, not just a checklist. ~ Managing Expectations for Accessibility Remediation
The healthiest and most well-built accessibility programs recognize that technology alone cannot create inclusive experiences. It takes people. People who listen to and understand their users, recognize subtle barriers, not just the obvious ones, make thoughtful decisions, and make accessibility a part of everyday practices.
The AI Factor
The discussions around artificial intelligence added another important perspective: AI merely reflects the data and the decisions it is built on.
If certain experiences, communities, or perspectives are excluded from the LLM datasets, that influences the systems we build. This reinforces the need for human oversight.
As we adopt AI into our systems, we also have a responsibility to train those tools not to overlook the human dimensions of accessibility. Those perspectives must become part of the data that informs code generation, content suggestions, rewrites, research, and other AI-powered outputs.
We must also continue to ask:
- Whose experiences are represented?
- Whose experiences are missing?
- Are we designing for real people or assumed users?
The People Behind Accessible Experiences
Behind every accessible, inclusive experience are people making choices: writing meaningful link text, choosing appropriate color contrast, creating intuitive navigation, and making sure content works for diverse audiences.
Accessibility scanners, plugins, and browser extensions are invaluable tools for identifying technical and code-level barriers, but they cannot replace human discernment. They cannot fully understand context, user intent, or the real-world experience of people with disabilities.
These tools can flag missing ALT text, but can’t tell you if the description actually adds value, context, support, or even authenticity. But people can.
These tools can detect contrast issues, but not whether a color is being used solely to convey information. But people can.
That’s the difference between detecting issues and understanding experiences.
Accessibility is Not a Series of Fixes
Historically, accessibility has been viewed as a cycle of finding issues and fixing them. But the most meaningful and lasting progress comes from addressing the practices and decisions that create barriers in the first place.
When accessibility works as a system, not just another task to complete, the results reach far beyond fixing individual issues, with benefits building on one another. Organizations develop more defined processes, establish more effective accessibility habits, and build greater awareness through ongoing training. This leads to more inclusive design decisions from the very beginning, resulting in fewer recurring roadblocks for the people who rely on your website or application.
The Accessibility Summit reinforced a belief I’ve held throughout my accessibility journey. True accessibility requires more than fixing errors. It requires ownership, training, collaboration, and involvement from designers, developers, content creators, and leadership, all with the shared goal of creating user experiences that recognize, respect, and include the full diversity of the people who use them.
Resources
- Why Accessibility Is An Operational Capability, Not A Feature
- Ask an MIT Professor: What Is System Thinking and Why Is It Important?
A human author creates the DubBlog posts. The AI tools Gemini and ChatGPT are sometimes used to brainstorm subject ideas, generate blog post outlines, and rephrase certain portions of the content. Our marketing team carefully reviews all final drafts for accuracy and authenticity. The opinions and perspectives expressed remain the sole responsibility of the human author.
