User Experience in Agile Development

💎 What a gem! Stark’s Web Accessibility Library (https://lnkd.in/eistWYpN), with handpicked design patterns, guides and collections on accessibility — from articles and books to checklists and tools. Just in time for European Accessibility Act — for designers and engineers. One for the bookmarks! To many companies, accessibility is still a highly specialized, technical, and confusing term. They often relate it to technical implementation details and optimizations for specialized tools such as screen readers — rather than designing a resilient and clear experience that everybody can benefit from. I always try to make accessibility more relatable to people who might have a wrong perception of it. For example, I explain that glasses and magnification are assistive technologies. That accessibility isn’t an on/off condition but a spectrum. I show that it can be temporary or situational — when you are holding a baby, or get stuck in a noisy airport. And I show how real people who happen to colorblind, deaf or neurodivergent use real products in real situations. Products are rarely accessible by accident. There must be an intent that captures and drives accessibility efforts in a product. And the best way to do that is by involving people with temporary, situational and permanent disabilities into the design process. Accessibility doesn’t have to be challenging if it’s considered early. No digital product is neutral. Accessibility is a deliberate decision, and a commitment. Not only does it help everyone; it also shows what a company believes in and values. And once you do have a commitment, it will be so much easier to retain accessibility, rather than adding it last minute as a crutch — because that’s where it’s way too late to do it right, and way too expensive to make it well. And yet again, a kind word of support to everyone speaking for and supporting accessibility work, often with a lot of resistance, with very little budget and with a lot of care and persistence — to help people who often need help most, and add benefits for everybody else. You are my heroes. 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 #ux #accessibility #design

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day everyone! It's a great day to remind people, that, accessibility is the responsibility of the whole team, including designers! A couple of things designers can do: - Use sufficient color contrast (text + UI elements) and don’t rely on color alone to convey meaning. - Ensure readable typography: support text resizing, avoid hard-to-read styles, maintain hierarchy. - Make links and buttons clear and distinguishable (label, size, states). - Design accessible forms: clear labels, error help, no duplicate input, document states. - Support keyboard navigation: tab order, skip links, focus indicators, keyboard interaction. - Structure content with headings and landmarks: use proper H1–Hn, semantic order, regions. - Provide text alternatives for images, icons, audio, and video. - Avoid motion triggers: respect reduced motion settings, allow pause on auto-play. - Design with flexibility: support orientation change, allow text selection, avoid fixed-height elements. - Document accessibly and communicate: annotate designs, collaborate with devs, QA, and content teams. Need to learn more? I got a couple of resources on my blog: - A Designer’s Guide to Documenting Accessibility & User Interactions: https://lnkd.in/eUh8Jvvn - How to check and document design accessibility in your mockups: a conference on how to use Figma plugins and annotation kits to shift accessibility left https://lnkd.in/eu8YuWyF - Accessibility for designer: where do I start? Articles, resources, checklists, tools, plugins, and books to design accessible products https://lnkd.in/ejeC_QpH - Neurodiversity and UX: Essential Resources for Cognitive Accessibility, Guidelines to understand and design for Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Autism and ADHD https://lnkd.in/efXaRwgF - Color accessibility: tools and resources to help you design inclusive products https://lnkd.in/dRrwFJ5 #Accessibility #ShiftLeft #GAAD

Here’s what happens when you have more than two people working on a product and you don’t use an accessible design system: 1) Components look different on every page 2) Color contrast is frequently ignored 3) Developers rebuild every component from scratch 4) Designers use inaccessible patterns 5) Reflow barely works, if it works at all, with objects overflowing and overlapping along with horizontal scrolling and random break points. 6) Because reflow barely works, magnification barely works. 7) Updates to a single component don’t propagate, so fixes for one accessibility issue have to be made in numerous places 8) Disabled users experience different barriers on every page, even when completing the same type of task 9) Required fields and error messages work differently on every form, and everyone thinks the other person is fixing them 10) Accessibility bugs pile up and become too expensive to fix, because nothing was reusable or standardized in the first place 11) Multiple page templates mean increased QA costs An accessible design system isn’t optional once your team grows. It’s the only way to build consistency, reduce duplication, and ensure accessibility doesn’t get overlooked when people assume someone else is handling it. The lack of an accessible design system creates a mountain of tech debt. The longer your organization waits to implement an accessible design system, the more it will cost in effort, headaches, and lost opportunities. #Disability #Accesibility #DesignSystems #Inclusion

♿💻 Accessibility isn’t just “nice to have” — it’s what makes a website usable for everyone. When we design or build, every detail matters: 🔹Text: readability, contrast, resize without breaking layout 🔹Headings (H1–H6): logical hierarchy, one H1 per page 🔹Alt text: meaningful descriptions for images 🔹Hover & focus states: visible indicators, no “hidden focus” 🔹DOM order: ensure keyboard navigation follows a logical path 🔹ARIA labels: add context where HTML alone isn’t enough To guide us, WCAG uses 3 compliance levels: 🔹 A (Must have) – The basics. Without this, many people simply cannot use your product.
 Examples: keyboard navigation, alt text for images, sufficient text contrast. 🔹 AA (Should have) – The standard most organizations aim for. It balances inclusion with practicality.
 Examples: focus visibility, resizable text, clear headings, captions for live audio. 🔹 AAA (Nice to have) – The gold standard. Harder to achieve everywhere but amazing if you can.
 Examples: sign language interpretation, extended audio descriptions, very high contrast text. #Accessibility #A11y #WCAG #UXDesign #UI #InclusiveDesign #WebDevelopment #ProductDesign

🚀 Designing for extreme users has been one of the biggest mindset shifts in my UX work. Focusing on people at the edges – whether it’s the elderly, children, or users with disabilities – forces you to uncover problems you’d otherwise miss. And here’s the thing: fixing those problems doesn’t just help a small group. It lifts the experience for everyone. Healthcare UX drives this home constantly. When you design for patients managing complex conditions or navigating cognitive impairments, the insights you gain can reshape the entire product. Features like voice commands and larger, simpler interfaces didn’t start as mainstream ideas. They were solutions to accessibility problems – now they’re things we all benefit from. Key learnings: • If it works for extreme users, it works for everyone. • Innovation often happens at the edges. • Inclusive design isn’t just ethical – it leads to better products. It’s a shift that’s transformed how I approach design – and honestly, it makes the work more meaningful. 👉 Curious to dig deeper? This article breaks it down really well: https://lnkd.in/gwMVzxQZ

Edge cases aren’t as rare as many think—they’re just less visible. Most teams design for the ideal user in the perfect scenario: ✅ Clean data. ✅ Fast wifi. ✅ Desktop screen. ✅ Full attention. ✅ Two working hands. But auditing dozens of products has shown me that “edge case” are sometimes the majority. → Your user ordering food while holding a crying baby → Someone navigating your app with a broken wrist → People using voice commands because their hands are busy → Someone squinting at your low-contrast text in bright sunlight We call them edge cases because they live outside our comfortable assumptions about how people use our products. The truth? Your “happy path” user—sitting calmly at their desk, fully focused, with perfect conditions—they’re the real edge case. When you design for the invisible majority, something interesting happens. Your product doesn’t just become more accessible. It becomes more usable for everyone. → Keyboard navigation helps screen reader users—and power users who prefer shortcuts → High contrast modes support low vision—and anyone using their phone outdoors → Simple language helps cognitive accessibility—and reduces friction for everyone → Voice controls assist motor impairments—and busy multitaskers → Reduced motion prevents vestibular issues—and saves battery life The businesses that understand this don’t treat accessibility as compliance theater. They recognize it as a competitive advantage. Because when you solve for the hardest use cases, you make your product resilient for all use cases. Most of your users aren’t swimming in perfect conditions. They’re navigating choppy waters with limited visibility, competing priorities, and real-world constraints. Design for the storm, not the calm. What’s the biggest “edge case” you’ve designed for? #uxdesign #accessibility #productdesign ——— 👋 Hi, I’m Dane—your source for UX and career tips. ❤️ Found this helpful? Dropping a like would be 🔥. 🔄 Share to help others (or for easy access later). ➕ Follow for more like this delivered to your feed every day.

#Accessibility experts: We're underselling the curb cut analogy. The classic curb cut is a perfect meat-space example of how a simple ramp formed into the concrete curb 1) makes life better for everyone, even though it is designed for people using a wheelchair. 100% true, and it makes people feel good about accessibility for 2 minutes… because they don't really see how it applies to their digital product. (Or if they do, they think we're only talking about developers). What else can we derive from the curb cut? 2) Time & Budget Ask the audience, "Is it cheaper to pour the concrete as a ramp? Or build a regular curb, then come back later to chisel out a ramp?" This is helpful, because product owners are often biased to ship rather than think about future technical debt. This is especially powerful when accessibility bugs are reported to leadership as missed functional requirements. 3) Making more valuable decisions, faster Accessible design helps make design decisions we know intuitively work well for everyone, not just people with disabilities. Rather than creating flashy portfolio pieces, designers can focus on what matters: Delivering value to the customer, creatively. Notice, delivering value comes first, ahead of creative. As a designer (BFA, Graphic Design), yes, I know creativity matters. But, customers don't come to our application to gaze and reflect on our brilliance, they come to solve their own problems. (Can't believe I'm still selling user first design in 2025). Image description: Escheresque curly walled glass pedestrian bridge with neon lights, entertainment screens. Stunning to look at, but no way to access using a wheelchair, crutches, pushing a pram/stroller and doesn't seem to actually cross the street.

Software rarely becomes inaccessible all at once. It just defaults to the median user, every time a decision gets made, until the distance between the product and the people using it is too wide to explain away. We've been working on closing that gap. The result is a redesigned Kustomer: new color themes, updated fonts, a tighter visual hierarchy throughout. It gives you a more comfortable and friendly experience. If most people open the app and can't quite put their finger on why it feels cleaner, that's probably the right outcome. But two decisions in this release I want to name specifically: A color theme designed for users with Protanopia, red-green colorblindness that affects roughly 1 in 12 men. And a new font option optimized for users with dyslexia. Neither of these are prominent features. They're the kind of things that, when they work, disappear entirely. The user just has a better day. The principle we worked from: structure should be felt, not announced. That applies to accessibility as much as it does to UI density. CX teams are not a monolith. Their tools shouldn't be either. Check out the new appearance settings next time you log in. #Kustomer #ProductDesign #Accessibility

Most usability testing focuses on the "general public." But if no one in your test group uses a screen reader, relies on keyboard navigation, or has cognitive challenges, are you really testing usability? People with disabilities make up a significant portion of the population, yet they're consistently underrepresented in user research. The result? Accessibility barriers that go completely unnoticed until it's too late. True inclusive design starts with inclusive testing. And the benefits extend far beyond compliance - clearer navigation, better contrast, and plain language improve the experience for everyone. Here's the thing: when you only test with users who interact with your site in the same way, you miss critical insights about how your design actually works in the real world. • A form that seems intuitive with a mouse might be impossible to navigate with just a keyboard • Color-coded information that makes perfect visual sense could be meaningless to someone who's colorblind • Complex language that feels professional might create barriers for users with cognitive differences Inclusive testing isn't just the right thing to do - it makes your product better for everyone. When you design for the edges, you strengthen the center. If you're ready to make your testing more inclusive but aren't sure where to start, reach out to organizations that can connect you with users with disabilities. Your research will be richer, and your final product will be more usable for everyone. #Accessibility #InclusiveDesign #UserResearch

Accessibility isn’t some extra thing you tack on at the end of a design system. It’s kind of the whole point. If your system isn’t accessible, all you’re really doing is scaling the same problems across every product. When accessibility is baked in from the start, everything gets easier. Designers don’t have to second guess themselves. Engineers don’t have to patch things later. The system actually does what it’s supposed to do. A few reasons why it matters so much: - It keeps things consistent You’re not relying on every designer to remember contrast, states, or edge cases. The system handles it - It removes a lot of guesswork No more “is this accessible enough?” The answer is already built into the components - It saves time (a lot of it) Fixing accessibility later is always slower than getting it right up front - It helps you avoid unnecessary risk Accessibility issues aren’t just UX problems; they can turn into real legal headaches - It makes the experience better for everyone Not just for people with disabilities, clearer, more usable products help all users - It builds trust with your team People are way more likely to adopt a system that actually helps them do their job better Accessibility isn’t a checklist. It’s the baseline. #DesignSystems #ProductDesign