10 Steps to Fix Bad Web Design: An Accessibility Proposal

Designers are good people—they never intentionally exclude users. Yet bad websites still exist, frustrating and alienating real people. The gap isn't malice; it's memory. With countless guidelines to remember, even the best designers miss accessibility issues. This article presents ten actionable insights, drawn from the original proposal, to bridge that gap. By reframing heuristics for designers and making crucial information visible, you can create inclusive experiences without memorizing a thousand rules. Let's turn good intentions into great, accessible design.

1. Acknowledge Designers' Intentions but Recognize Gaps

No designer wakes up thinking, “I hope someone can’t read this text” or “Let’s make this impossible to use with one hand.” Designers are inherently empathetic. Yet despite good intentions, designs often exclude people. You’ve seen it: tiny gray fonts, complex navigation, or interactive elements that fail without a mouse. The disconnect isn’t carelessness—it’s a systemic problem. We must first admit that we, as designers, can create exclusion unintentionally. Only then can we move toward solutions. Recognizing this gap is the first step to closing it.

2. Understand That Accessibility Is a Matter of Life and Death

Some argue that digital accessibility isn’t urgent, but they’re wrong. As Aral Balkan powerfully states, nearly every design affects life and death events. A poorly designed bus timetable app can make someone miss a daughter’s fifth birthday party—a life event. Worse, it might prevent someone from saying goodbye to a dying grandmother—a death event. When your design fails, real people suffer real consequences. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s ethics. Remembering the stakes transforms accessibility from a nice-to-have into a moral imperative.

3. Identify Why Designs Still Exclude People

We know not everyone sees perfectly, hears perfectly, thinks the same way, or moves the same way. So why do designs still exclude? The answer is cognitive overload. Designers are expected to remember usability heuristics, accessibility guidelines, visual best practices, content strategy, and more—often dozens of overlapping rules. It’s simply too much. Recognizing why exclusion persists isn’t about blaming designers; it’s about understanding the system’s failure. We need to make the right information easy to access during design, not depend on flawless recall.

4. Accept the Overwhelming Amount of Guidelines

Consider the sheer breadth of knowledge a modern designer must juggle: WCAG criteria, responsive breakpoints, color contrast ratios, keyboard navigation patterns, semantic HTML, screen reader behavior, and cognitive load principles—just for starters. Even seasoned professionals have limits. The problem isn’t that designers don’t care; it’s that they can’t remember everything. Accepting this reality is freeing. It shifts the conversation from “designers should try harder” to “let’s design better tools and workflows that make smart choices the default.”

5. Apply Jakob Nielsen's Heuristic for Designers Too

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics are timeless. Heuristic №6, “Recognition rather than Recall,” originally applies to users: minimize memory load by making information visible. But why not apply it to designers? Let’s tweak it: the information required to produce the design should be visible or easily retrievable when needed. This simple shift turns a user-focused principle into a design-process principle. If designers can recognize issues rather than recall them from memory, fewer mistakes happen. It’s about changing the environment, not the person.

6. Make Accessibility Information Visible During Design

How do we make accessibility issues recognizable? One way is through design tools and checklists. Imagine a color picker that warns about low contrast or a component library that includes ARIA roles by default. Or a project checklist that highlights accessibility before launch. The goal is to surface critical information—contrast ratios, focus indicators, alt text prompts—right where designers are working. When accessibility is baked into the tooling, it becomes a natural part of the design flow, not an afterthought.

7. Use “Recognition Rather Than Recall” for Design Decisions

Expand the heuristic further. For every design decision—layout, typography, interaction—ask: “Can I check this easily without memorizing a rule?” Create cheat sheets, embedded guidelines, or automated testing that gives instant feedback. For example, instead of recalling minimum font size for legibility, have a style guide that auto-sizes text. Instead of remembering keyboard requirements, use a pattern library that ships with proper focus management. The more you rely on recognition, the less cognitive load you place on yourself.

8. Learn from Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery's Book

The book A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experiences by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery is a treasure trove. It dives into how to integrate accessibility into every phase of design—from persona creation to content to visual design. It provides practical heuristics and examples. Use it as a reference, not a read-once manual. Keep it on your desk. Refer to its checklists. By making this knowledge retrievable (recognition!), you empower yourself to design inclusively without memorizing every detail.

9. Integrate Heuristics into Your Workflow

Don’t treat heuristics as just theory. Embed them into daily practice. For instance, create a quick accessibility review card with 5-10 key checkpoints. Pair it with regular design critiques. Use browser tools and plugins that flag issues in real-time. The goal is to create a habit of recognizing problems early. Over time, this reduces the mental load and builds an intuitive sense of what’s accessible. Your workflow becomes smarter, not harder.

10. Take Action: Homework for Better Websites

The original article calls this piece “homework.” And it is. Start small: pick one heuristic—recognition rather than recall—and apply it to your own design process this week. Audit one screen you’re currently designing. Are any accessibility cues missing? Could you add a tooltip, a label, a contrast check? Then share what you learn. By making these small changes, you contribute to a world where good designers create great, inclusive websites. The homework never stops, but the results are worth it.

In conclusion, the path from good intentions to great accessible design doesn’t require superhuman memory. It requires a shift: making the right information visible at the right time. By applying recognition heuristics to your own process, accepting your limits, and using proven resources, you can bridge the gap. Start with these ten steps, and watch your designs go from excluding to embracing everyone.