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In the end, if we let AI "solve" accessibility as a side effect, we're basically saying that disabled people's needs were never enough on their own. Accessibility is a civil right, not a byproduct.
#Accessibility #AI
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Stef Walter
@stephaniewalter@front-end.social
mastodon 4.7.3UX Researcher & Strategist, Inclusive Product Designer in Enterprise UX. Speaker, Author, Mentor & Teacher. Chaotic neutral tea & CSS lover.
Complaining = being alive. 🌈
I talk about #design, #UXResearch, #accessibility and #InclusiveDesign mostly
I also draw #illustrations for fun, so you might get drawings, food and plants here.
On interacting with me and social media content: https://stephaniewalter.design/faq-frequently-asked-questions/#social-media
3460 Followers
274 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 05, 2022
Pronouns:
She/her
Neurospicy Adventure:
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It's not just the web, accommodations disability advocates pushed for years are only showing up now to help delivery robots. Zong and Elavsky call this the "ramping automation effect". And worse: those robots are causing harm to disabled people. Ironic, isn’t it?
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You can also read the full explanation of the design decisions behind it: https://boardgamewire.com/index.php/2026/07/06/designer-pair-launch-colorsym-giving-publishers-a-free-tool-for-colourblind-friendly-board-game-creation/
And if you are curious, another system exists as well: ColorADD: https://www.coloradd.net/en/
Want to test your accessibility knowledge? Dave Davies built this free accessibility quiz to help you. You get 128 hand written questions across WCAG 2.2, ARIA, semantic HTML and contrast. And for each, an explanation for each answer
https://a11y.quest/
Our CSS isn't opinionated enough.
@craigabbott@a11y.info argues that the CSS “class only” approach is nice, but it also makes it easy to build things that are not accessible. For example: make a div look like a button. He proposes to style the HTML tags and ARIA attributes directly (like button or [aria-expanded="true"]). This way: developers can’t get the visual, without the proper semantics. Accessibility becomes a side effect of doing it right.
https://www.craigabbott.co.uk/blog/2026/our-css-isnt-opinionated-enough/
Sometimes, you stumble upon someone’s work that deeply resonates with you: the style, the content, the imagery, the themes.
That’s what happened when I discovered Chrissy's work. She's a German illustrator and artist who explores the human psyche and the madness of everyday life, between chaos and sensitivity. And, I think her art will speak a lot to neurodivergent people.
Her portfolio and shop: https://www.chrizzly-arts.de/kunst
She also has more work on her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrizzlyarts_/
Fontastic Space is a free tool to help you find the mathematically optimal font pairing. It give you pairing score on multiple categories (including anatomical comparison of ascender, cap height, x-height and more)
I don't think the lady in the shower at the pool was ready for my hair to be bleeding pink and yellow and my shampoo foam be all colorful. At least the kid next to her was mesmerized 😅
Life as a pool mermaid haha.
Current status: waiting for my friends to level up with me on the book series because I have 150 other memes I want to share but I don't want to spoil 😅
IWKYM!
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I also am absolutely a passenger Princess reader. What plot wholes? It has dragons / a cute dinosaur, who cares? 😅
Still, I have to admit I preferred ToG and Crescent City over to ACATOR. Feyre annoys me. But I am a big fan of Nesta and the Batboys. I often end up preferring side characters 🤷
Little reminder that access for disabled people brought us a lot of innovations and technologies that benefit everyone: electric tooth brush, ramps, text to speech and voice assistants, Velcro, audio books, touch-less and automatic doors, subtitles and captions, etc.
Great video by Jenni Pettican
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3fjqnl9WwU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3fjqnl9WwU
7 Everyday Hacks You Wouldn’t Have Without Disabled People! #DisabilityAwareness
Tool of the week: if you are tired of cluttered text editors with 150 options you don't need, you are going to love Blank Page.
It's a very simple (this is positive), distraction free, text editor in the browser, write, share, enjoy.
(by René Galindo and Mo Boudra)
Happy "let's pretend we care about queer people to get their money" month. 🌈
Since token price is increasing, should I write an article on how to do qualitative data analysis, the good old fashion way using data coding and indexing? Just, you know, in case, we have to go back to doing this manually? Or is this too academia UX? I noticed I have a super detailed example, but never published anything about it.
Design isn’t the pretty pixels output. It is the slow, messy work of understanding context, constraints, and real needs. And then shaping a solution that actually fits. AI can fake the form, not the thinking. And when it’s faked, the product that looks polished, ambitious, and impressive at first glance, begins to unravel the moment you actually use it. Great thoughts by Karri Saarinen
Output isn’t design (5min) https://linear.app/now/output-isn-t-design
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The solution for him: know when to say “stop”, to fix boundaries, and protect real thinking time. I think that, this is going to be hard when AI tools promise productivity boosts to the people who decide to replace humans with AI tools.
https://siddhantkhare.com/writing/ai-fatigue-is-real
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@EricLawton@kolektiva.social yah, I've was already annoyed at "robots are users" when SEO was a thing and we used the same arguments "accessibility is good for SEO". And, I'm trying to stay polite on social media, but, F the robots, especially those that build corporate greed. I care about humans. I want people to care about humans first. How horrible is it to say "yeah, disabled people needs will be met only if this also meets robots needs".
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Also, I love the FAQ "talking to a developer who has questions" style of the article, hehe.
https://ericwbailey.website/published/heres-how-to-instruct-a-llm-to-reference-the-aria-authoring-practices-guide/
Seriously how do you expect me to get interested in your TV shows when I have the most amazing audio books to read?!?
I haven't been super into any TV for ages. I don't know why, I get super bored with most super fast. Meh.
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Still, here you go, if you want to prevent harm: include anti-personas in your research, define anti-scenarios and find ways to stop them from happening, nudge towards positive behavior.
I watched the manosphere documentary; here is how design is making things worse. (15min) by Maria Teresa Stella.
Nice cool: Photo Palettes, a collection of color palettes inspired by beautiful pictures.
https://photopalettes.com/
Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social
AI Doesn't Fix Accessible Systems. It Depends on Them.
@annaecook@mastodon.social calls out the fantasy that AI or generative UI will save us where UX has “failed”. AI does not fix bad or inaccessible systems, it exposes and multiplies the issues that were already there. When the foundation is wrong, no layer on top can fully compensate. The way to make your website “AI ready” is still the same work we’ve been doing for years: robust hierarchy, semantics, and accessible design systems.
https://annaecook.com/writing/2026/ai-doesnt-fix-accessible-systems-it-depends-on-them
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@mcc@mastodon.social haa I feel you, same here. Also I find myself expecting a search in regular books now, when I read something suspicious and need to go back to a specific part where there might have been foreshadowing to check if the theory in my brain still holds hehe.
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I tried a paying tool that let me upload most of my annexes then prefilled the form with the content. It was honestly, impressively smooth. I then just had to double check, instead of having to recall “where did I put this number again last year??”.
Full article worth a read: https://uxdesign.cc/10-ui-patterns-that-wont-survive-the-ai-shift-002cb9b853ae
#AIUIPattern #ProductDesign #AIPatterns
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@thisismissem yeah it's a blessing and a curse for neurodivergent people. I've heard of some folks going full burn out because of the dopamine rush of building super fast, then losing sleep because they were so hyperfocused.
154 Macs Since 1983: a really cool timeline dataviz showing 43 years of Apple’s designs, from Macintoshes, to PowerBooks, iMacs, Macbooks and beyond.
The colorful 1998 iMac with the transparent cover is still iconic in my heart, I wish we would bring semi transparent hardware back.
https://sheets.works/data-viz/every-mac
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@nclm@mastodon.social yah I imagine this more for board games where you have the same little wooden squares on a map and the difference is just color.
How does one convince all their colleagues to watch Severance and read Dungeon Crawler Carl so that said colleagues understand when one asks if the team will get a Melon Party, and why one wants to shout "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE" when told, they won't get any?
#AskingForAFriend
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A user once said “I don’t remember exactly what it’s called, but when I need it, I know where I can find it”. So, for complex systems with many options, filters act as recall tools, which is easier than having to remember all the options.
We are building both: natural search for the quick and easy, but keeping the advanced filters, for those deep dive into the database.
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For example, I too have my concerns regarding natural language search replacing filters, because they can help with discovery and surfacing options users were not even aware existed.
But, it’s about memory. I work in enterprise UX, and a lot of our advanced search filters contain options users don’t remember in detail, but sometimes need.
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@viraptor@cyberplace.social I think it's based on the usage that many people who want to replace designers by AI have: prompt a full page, check 3 results, pick one, be done for the day.
I like your approach of using it as a though partner to challenge you. Silly question though: how do you stop, as you said, you could work on a design forever. Do you have things in place to avoid looping up to burn out?
This one is for my enterprise UX folks: I talked about Designing Inclusive Enterprise UX at If U Seek, the Useberry podcast.
I shared how we deal with complexity and the trade-offs we sometimes have to do on data heavy interfaces while still prioritizing accessibility whenever we can. I also explain how we run user research for complex busy workflows and tools people use on a daily basis.
I hope people who work for B2B complex products will relate to this.
My curated weekly UX Research, Design, Accessibility & Tech Newsletter is out:
- My Project Definition Framework
- Interview on Design Process and Enterprise UX
- Being an Engineer and Artist in the AI Era
- Claude Design Is a Prototyping Tool Not a Design Systems Tool
- Why Neurodivergent People Love Axolotls
- A Pez Dispenser and a "How Bicycles Work" Interactive Explanation
- And an Inner Potato Quiz
👉🏻 Newsletter article on my blog: https://stephaniewalter.design/blog/pixels-of-the-week-may-31-2026/
A couple of weeks ago, I talked to Dave Smyth about my design process: from La Carte Blanche to enterprise UX, why personas don't always work, and getting access to users as a non-negotiable. 👇
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@skippy@dungeoncrawler.world I have a very silly sticker idea, but, it won't work if people don't have the context. I wanted to make a NEW ACHIVEMENT: You got a I TOLD YOU SO box. As a sticker and shirt, because, we need it, desperatly. Not sure many people will get it though
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The automated extraction of form fields is a good example of how AI extracting data can really help reduce cognitive load.
As a personal anecdote, I did my taxes last week in Luxembourg. Which causes me a lot of stress each year. It’s a 14 pages PDF to fill, with numbers, coming from all sorts of annexes.
Am I the only one who feels like the Duffer Brothers took Vi's character design, gave her some of Jinx's tinkering personality and voilà, Nikki Baxter, from the new Stranger Things anime?!
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@mahryekuh oh, yes, this is a giant mess. People now use AI to write super convoluted emails, that are hard to understand, prone to interpretation, and abuse this new gray area on purpose, to sneak in stuff that was not agreed upon clearly.
I think it's a nightmare for many neurodivergent people who need direct clear language. @thisismissem
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@AnneMacro@hachyderm.io @mcc@mastodon.social hahah this is why I struggle with the Throne of Glass ones. They all sound the same and their written version is strange. Like Chaol, really?
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@nuwagaba2@mastodon.social I would say that it depends how it's used. We should never let computers make decisions for us. It's tempting though.
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@mcc@mastodon.social haa same. I have the issue when a series is not finished and they take time between 2 books. My brain goes "who the hell are you again?!?". Especially fantaisy books. It doesn't help that I don't read the names. I don't know how to explain, but my brain recognizes the pattern, but I don't pronounce it in my head. So, unless I've read it in audio book (for which I also get the ebook just for the search), I actually don't know most character's names 😅
What makes people happy?
A dataviz, based on a 2017 experiment where they asked 10000 to track experiences that made them happy. The classification is quite interesting.
You can also explore people's happy moments on each island.
https://pudding.cool/2026/02/happy-map/
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@skippy@dungeoncrawler.world Exactly, how dear people not know about how appalled he is?! Also I need to make this into a sticker at some point hehe.