Category: Accessibility

The journey toward a more accessible internet

Digital accessibility has come a long way. However, the gap between where we want to be in the future and where we are today is too wide. As of 2024, 96% of the top one million home pages have WCAG 2 failures. Digital content creation is getting easier and faster as content creators increase their… Continue reading The journey toward a more accessible internet

Less Effort, More Completion: The EAS Framework for Simplifying Forms

Summary:  Use the EAS framework — Eliminate first, Automate where possible, and Simplify what remains — to minimize user effort and improve form completion rates. Filling out a form is rarely anyone’s idea of fun. Users are goal-oriented — they want to accomplish their goals quickly and efficiently. The more effort a form demands, the… Continue reading Less Effort, More Completion: The EAS Framework for Simplifying Forms

Deque Systems wins the Excellence in Digital Inclusion award at the 9th Middle East Banking AI & Analytics Summit 2025

We’re thrilled to announce that Deque Systems has been presented with the Excellence in Digital Inclusion award at the 9th Middle East Banking AI & Analytics Summit 2025. This prestigious award recognizes our dedication to creating digital experiences that are accessible and inclusive for everyone, including people with disabilities, and the impact of our work… Continue reading Deque Systems wins the Excellence in Digital Inclusion award at the 9th Middle East Banking AI & Analytics Summit 2025

User-Interface Elements: Glossary

Summary:  Use this glossary to quickly clarify definitions for key graphical user-interface elements and controls. UX research and design require knowledge and understanding of many jargon terms denoting various UI components and controls. Jump to a definition in the table or review the complete glossary. 2D-Matrix Input Control A specialized input control used primarily in… Continue reading User-Interface Elements: Glossary

Digital accessibility and the cost of exclusion

In my previous Proactive Perspectives article, I explored lessons from the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), discussed what to do when digital accessibility goals remain elusive, and shared strategies for managing disruption and keeping your program on track. Today, I want to build on those strategies by looking more closely at opportunities and… Continue reading Digital accessibility and the cost of exclusion

How Service Design Will Evolve with AI Agents

Summary:  AI will force the transformation of service design by introducing new actors, shifting user dynamics, and redefining success metrics. Service design is the activity of planning and organizing a business’s resources (people, props, and processes) in order to effectively deliver the intended experience. As products and services grow in sophistication, so does the need… Continue reading How Service Design Will Evolve with AI Agents

AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know

Summary:  Plausible but incorrect AI responses create design challenges and user distrust. Discover evidence-based UI patterns to help users identify fabrications. What Are AI Hallucinations? Generative AIs are well-known for their tendency to produce hallucinations — untruthful answers (or nonsense images). A hallucination occurs when a generative AI system generates output data that seems plausible… Continue reading AI Hallucinations: What Designers Need to Know

How to Apply and Secure a UX Job

Summary:  Apply and secure UX jobs with tips for customizing resumes using generative AI, researching employers, acing interviews, and negotiating offers. Submitting UX job applications can feel stressful as you submit your professional work for evaluation by strangers over and over again. But it doesn’t have to be. This article offers useful tactics to help… Continue reading How to Apply and Secure a UX Job

Advice for Approaching a UX Job Search

Summary:  Understand your values, outline job constraints, upskill areas of weakness, leverage your network, and pace yourself to stay motivated and focused. This article will help you navigate your UX job search with greater confidence and focus by exploring practical, yet often overlooked tactics. It is just one in a series on advice for UX… Continue reading Advice for Approaching a UX Job Search

Preparation Tactics for a Tough UX Job Market

Summary:  Use these tactics to prepare yourself for a downturn in the UX job market. It’s relatively easy to bask in the glow of a sunny UX job market and its plentiful opportunities. However, coping with a challenging job market is the true test of endurance for the UX professional. This article is the first… Continue reading Preparation Tactics for a Tough UX Job Market

Redefine Your Design Skills to Prepare for AI

Summary:  Designers must embrace 5 principles as our industry shifts with AI. Generative AI is impacting job markets. According to researchers at Harvard Business School, the German Institute for Economic Research, and the U.K.’s Imperial College London Business School, demand for automation-prone jobs fell 21% eight months after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022.… Continue reading Redefine Your Design Skills to Prepare for AI

Easily check for web accessibility problems in ten minutes or less

Testing on a computer Keyboard Navigation Note: If you’re on a Mac, you may need to change some settings for the Tab key to work as described here. Adrian Roselli has helpfully compiled a few links to guides for this. Use the Tab key to cycle through the page you want to look at. Ask yourself… Continue reading Easily check for web accessibility problems in ten minutes or less

Testing Visual Design: A Comprehensive Guide

Summary:  Use methods like 5-second testing, first-click testing, and preference testing to gain insights into how users perceive your visual design. Visual design is the first thing users notice when they encounter a digital product like a website or app. It plays a large role in capturing users’ attention, defining brand identity, and creating an… Continue reading Testing Visual Design: A Comprehensive Guide

UX and CX Merge: The Shift from Products to Journeys

Summary:  Organizations are starting to merge user experience and customer experience into a single function, setting the foundation for a journey-centric-experience practice. Organizational silos and product-centric design make it difficult to resolve friction for customers who use our products and services. User-centered design is applied to digital products, but many pain points in real customer… Continue reading UX and CX Merge: The Shift from Products to Journeys

The Biggest Challenges Practitioners Encounter Working in UX

Summary:  We surveyed 126 practitioners, uncovering the biggest challenges in the UX field. Almost all responses originated from the same core problem: perception of UX. The Best — and Worst — Things About UX Earlier this year, we surveyed UX practitioners through our newsletter and LinkedIn channel. We asked respondents to reflect on their careers and answer… Continue reading The Biggest Challenges Practitioners Encounter Working in UX

The full axe-con 2025 schedule is here: Plan your ultimate accessibility conference experience

Start getting excited—the complete schedule for axe-con 2025 is live! As the world’s largest free digital accessibility conference, axe-con promises three days of 60+ talks packed with inspiration, education, and connection. Now, you can see every session topic and meet the incredible presenters who’ll be sharing their expertise with you and your fellow attendees. This… Continue reading The full axe-con 2025 schedule is here: Plan your ultimate accessibility conference experience

Alt Text: Not Always Needed

Summary:  Write alt text that communicates an image’s purpose without repeating page content. Focus on meaning rather than visual description. Alt text (or alternative text) is metadata intended to help screen-reader users understand what an image is depicting. Most guidance for writing alt text describes how to make individual web-based images accessible and understandable for… Continue reading Alt Text: Not Always Needed

Digital accessibility needs for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations

Electric vehicles (EVs) are an increasingly common part of our lives, and based on current predictions, the number of EVs on the road is going to continue going up. This means demand for charging stations will keep rising as well. As with any new, human-centric technology, accessibility is an essential concern. Charging stations present a… Continue reading Digital accessibility needs for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations

Axe Reports 2.0: Make better data-driven accessibility decisions at scale

Successful digital accessibility programs run on great data. Without it, you can’t report on your progress or drive the right conversations around accessibility improvements with your stakeholders. That’s where axe Reports comes in. Available in the axe Platform, axe Reports is Deque’s enterprise-ready tool designed to help your organization track progress, pinpoint risks, and quickly… Continue reading Axe Reports 2.0: Make better data-driven accessibility decisions at scale

Technology Myths and Urban Legends

Summary:  When users don’t clearly understand how systems function, they develop unique (and often incorrect) theories to explain their experiences. In user research, we often hear people describe how they think technology works. Sometimes, those theories are accurate, but most often, they are not. Through the many user interviews, field studies, and user testing sessions… Continue reading Technology Myths and Urban Legends

Icon Usability: When and How to Evaluate Digital Icons

Summary:  Effective icons depend on recognizability and interpretation. Evaluate them with methods appropriate for your specific research questions Icon Usability Effective icons can increase usability by helping users understand and interpret available functionality. However, when poorly implemented, they harm usability and introduce confusion. In Digital Icons That Work, I emphasize the importance of two variables… Continue reading Icon Usability: When and How to Evaluate Digital Icons

Sneaking: The Deceptive UX Pattern You Never Saw Coming

Summary:  Sneaking is a deceptive practice that includes three main patterns: forced continuity, hidden costs, and sneak into basket. Deceptive patterns are often employed to boost business growth, but they come at the expense of transparency and customer trust. This article discusses three types of deceptive patterns that all fall under the umbrella of sneaking.… Continue reading Sneaking: The Deceptive UX Pattern You Never Saw Coming

The Road to Good Intentions Is Paved with Hell

This post is the second in a three-part series about how screen readers obtain what users need from applications and operating systems. Part 1 introduced accessibility APIs (application programming interfaces) and the accessibility tree. I’ll conclude the series with a discussion of the IAccessible2 API, which is key to how modern Windows-based screen readers communicate… Continue reading The Road to Good Intentions Is Paved with Hell