Half day accessibility for designers

This half day (approximately 4 hour) hands on workshop helps designers prevent accessibility issues at the source — in the design itself. Through guided exercises, designers learn how to annotate their designs so that engineers receive everything needed to implement an accessible experience the first time, across both Web and mobile UX.

At a glance

  • Audience: product, UX, and visual designers; design system owners; design managers; researchers who collaborate closely with design.
  • Format: approximately 4 hours of live, instructor-led training delivered remotely over Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
  • Group size: capped at 15 participants per session to keep it hands on and interactive.
  • Schedule options: a single half-day block, or two 2-hour sessions on consecutive days.
  • Language: English.
  • Customization: examples, sample screens, and annotation exercises tailored to your industry, product, and design system on request.
  • Materials provided: slides, sample design files, hands-on annotation exercises, and a reusable annotation checklist participants can apply to their own work the next day.
  • Accessibility of the training itself: live captions, accessible slides and exercise files, and reasonable accommodations available on request.
  • Session recording: available on request for participants who cannot attend live.

Learning objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  • Recognize accessibility barriers in common UI patterns, components, and design systems.
  • Annotate designs with heading structure, landmarks, accessible names, info and relationships, reading and focus order, and color and contrast requirements.
  • Apply mobile-specific considerations such as touch target size, gestures, dynamic type, orientation, and screen reader behavior on iOS and Android.
  • Hand off designs that engineering can implement accessibly the first time, without rework.
  • Use a reusable annotation checklist on their own designs immediately after the workshop.

Learners are expected to come in with a basic understanding of accessibility, the types of disabilities, the assistive technologies people use, and the POUR principles. Our 90 minute Accessibility basics for designers short training is the recommended prerequisite and provides exactly this grounding, including a live demo of a screen reader user navigating the Web.

Annotating designs for accessibility

The core of the workshop. Hands on exercises where designers take sample screens (Web and mobile) and add the annotations developers need, including:

  • Heading structure and hierarchy
  • Landmarks and page regions
  • Accessible names and labels for controls
  • Info and relationships (groupings, associations between labels, controls, and instructions)
  • Reading and focus order
  • Color contrast and non-color cues
  • Touch target size and spacing for mobile
  • States, focus indicators, and error messaging

Mobile UX considerations

Targeted exercises on the patterns that most often break on mobile — gestures, custom controls, dynamic type, orientation, and screen reader rotor/explore-by-touch behavior on iOS and Android.

Putting it together

Designers leave with a reusable annotation checklist and a sample annotated design they produced during the session, ready to apply to their own work the next day.

Bring this workshop to your team

Contact us to schedule a session for your team, request customization for your industry, product, or design system, or ask about combining this workshop with our other half-day or multi-day trainings.

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