An accessibility conformance report is not proof of accessibility

An accessibility conformance report is not proof of accessibility.

Too many procurements still work like this: ask the vendor for a VPAT, file it, check the box, move on. Months later, actual users hit barriers the report never mentioned — keyboard traps, unlabeled controls, PDFs no screen reader can parse.

Buying accessible tech takes more than collecting a document.

We ask different questions: Which version was tested? Who tested it, and with which assistive tech? What remains broken, and what is the remediation timeline in the contract? Can actual users test before renewal?

Put those answers in writing. Put remediation timelines in the contract. Re-test at delivery, not just at proposal.

Procurement is an accessibility tool — maybe the strongest one government has. A requirement at purchase prevents a retrofit at launch.

Buy like someone will have to use it on day one. Because someone will.

Axe-con 2027 is Feb 23-24, virtual and free — and the call for presenters closes Oct 30 at

Axe-con 2027 is Feb 23-24, virtual and free — and the call for presenters closes Oct 30 at 5pm PT.

That deadline matters. The strongest sessions at axe-con come from practitioners shipping real work, not just talking about it — testing with actual users, fixing design systems, making government services work at scale.

If that work is happening on a team, consider submitting. Representation from public-sector accessibility is still too rare there.

Registration and CFP: https://www.deque.com/blog/axe-con-2027-registration-is-now-open/

Placeholder text is not a label

Placeholder text is not a label.

It disappears the moment someone starts typing. Then the field that said "Email address" just shows an address — and the person has to remember what they were supposed to enter, and whether they got it right.

For someone with a cognitive disability, a memory difference, or just a lot on their mind at a kitchen table at night, that disappearing act is a barrier. Not a minor annoyance. A barrier.

WCAG in plain English: a label has to stay visible, be tied to its field in code, and survive autofill, zoom, and error recovery.

The fix is boring and it works: put a real label above the field, keep it there, and use placeholder only for an example format — never for the instruction itself.

We test this way: fill the form, make an error on purpose, zoom to 200%, and see if every field still explains itself. If it doesn't, it doesn't ship.

Good labels don't make a design less clean. They make it usable after the first keystroke.

I write educational children's books

I write educational children's books. The main character is a very stretchy elephant.

Writing for kids taught me something it took years of UX work to learn: you can't hide behind complexity with a five-year-old. If the page doesn't make sense in two seconds, they turn it. No amount of clever wording saves you.

Kids are the most honest usability testers alive. They don't read instructions. They tap the thing that looks tappable. They get frustrated instantly, and they tell you exactly why — usually by walking away.

Every interface since has run through that kid test: obvious in two seconds? Works on the first try? Usable without reading a manual?

Designing for young minds strips UX down to its essence — clear, kind, forgiving. That's not a lesser version of design. It's the purest one.

Most arguments about accessibility are really arguments about defaults

Most arguments about accessibility are really arguments about defaults.

A component library offers forty ways to build a button. The team picks the one that looks right. Nobody checks the focus state, the contrast at small sizes, the screen-reader label — because the component didn't make them.

That's why we build highly opinionated components. Each one ships with exactly one right way to use it: focus indicators that can't be turned off, color pairs that pass contrast, labels the component requires rather than suggests. Flexibility is the enemy — every option is a chance to exclude someone.

This isn't a restriction on designers. It's the opposite. When the accessible choice is the default, designers stop spending energy on the basics and spend it on the experience.

Accessible procurement, accessible design systems, accessible teams — they're all the same idea: make the right thing the easy thing.

That's what we're striving for. One component at a time.