Understanding UI & UX Design.
In this section of my website, I will be going through terms commonly used within the UX and UI design space to help readers understand design jargon I use in my portfolio.
Terms:
User Interface (UI)
In simple terms, a User Interface is visual and interaction elements that users use to engage with a digital product front end and back end. Like how a mobile app screen featuring a navigation bar, search function, and easily understood buttons to get to each feature of said app. Within the total composition of the app, the interface elements that the user interacts with are the User Interface.
User Experience (UX)
User Experience is all about the target user’s emotions, perceptions, and responses resulting from the use of any designed product. This can even include buildings! A good example of positive UX would be a texting application that is intuitive to use and has all the features a target user can need, will give a positive user experience.
Within human emotions, when something works well, that leads to a positive experience. This can be for anything, as mentioned before, even outside of digital applications (even if that is what most people use it for nowadays). Having greenery in a shared space, using an app that works just right, anything that is tailored for the users to have a more positive experience falls into the good UX category. Bad UX is having an area that is too dull, or a webpage that just doesn't work right that negatively impacts the user’s emotions. The entire journey that the user experiences from an emotional perspective and usability perspective is UX.
Accessibility
In design, Accessibility means designing products so that they are usable/more usable for people with any form of disabilities, whether big or small.
An example of this would be keeping the contrast ratios in colors high in designs.
Keeping the colors high in contrast leads to the ability for almost everyone to read and see signifiers within designs better. This lets those with visual impairments have an easier time reading and navigating the designed product, while also improving the designed product for regular users.
Usability
Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by its target audience to achieve their goals with the product.
The best example for this would be the ability for users to use an online checkout process quickly and without mistakes.
If the online checkout process has high usability, the process will be quick and easy (without mistakes) for the target audience. Checkout processes with low usability may have errors that lead to issues for the user, such as not searching up their address easier, or not having access to quick payment options from places like PayPal, instead forcing the user to type out all their information slowly from their credit card, which they can easily miss-type.
So with the preamble out of the way, what exactly is the problem? The problem is that designers subconsciously design in ways that affect users with disabilities more disproportionately than users without disabilities. This does not mean this happens because designers are intentionally trying to exclude people with disabilities.
This happens simply because designers make assumptions, which makes their jobs easier. When those assumptions are based primarily on users without disabilities, the needs of other users are easily overlooked. Designers have a lot on their plate and usually work under super tight deadlines, so not accounting for people is just a matter of it simply just happening with no ill will whatsoever. Usually it is the opposite.
This can appear in many ways, but a primary example is when a menu for a restaurant is designed with so many colors and photos that it becomes hard to read. When a user without visual impairments tries to order food on it, it might be an annoyance. But in more severe circumstances, this could lead to the menu being completely unreadable from the get-go. The same design choice therefore affects two users very differently, all over a simple choice to include more things where they are not needed.
This example demonstrates why accessibility is important in UX and UI design. A designer may choose a particular color combination that lies outside a needed contrast ratio because it looks appealing or fits the brand; however, the visual appearance impacts a user. If the design is creating unneeded difficulty or gives unneeded information to a user, it can make it difficult or impossible for some users to access; this means the design creates a barrier.
The designer may not have intended to discriminate against anyone; they may even have had an AI do their entire menu design, but the AI isn't human and cannot catch human issues on the same level as a human. By brushing it off instead of thinking critically, they have discriminated against people with disabilities.
The same problem becomes even more significant when these design choices are repeated across entire websites, applications, or other designs as part of "branding." A person may encounter a brand that they cannot even access a single service from due to this simple choice. Each individual decision around accessibility may seem minor, but they create large issues for many people or users.
Ableism in UI/UX
The subject in this section that I will be talking about in is ableism in UI/UX. Ableism, as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is "discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities" (Merriam-Webster, 2026). This essay will cover how ableism applies subconsciously to all designers due to the original ideas behind design and how we can combat it in the future.
Designers are often taught to design for an assumed target audience. This target audience is something of an average amalgamation of all the potential users that would be using the product. This user often does not represent those with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities. This is where ableism enters into the design process subconsciously. Without intention, designers often overlook the needs of these individuals.
As a UI/UX design student with learning disabilities, I wish that many designers of educational software spent more time actually accommodating my disabilities. The typical "dyslexia font" never worked for me, and all the stupid add-ons never worked either; it was always the simple solutions of high-contrast text or other accessibility features that worked for me in the long run. These simple add-ons are often overlooked, so I wish to bring more attention to them within design as a whole!
This is why accessibility needs to be considered during the design process rather than treated as an afterthought. Designers should ask whether their decisions allow as many users as possible to access and understand the information being presented. By recognizing the assumptions that influence their designs, designers can nip this in the bud when it happens. "She wanted to defend accessibility, but she didn't know how." (Sredojevic, 2025). Sadly, this is an uncommon trend among designers who are burdened with heavy workloads.
Many groups are affected by this subconscious design issue. This includes kids with learning disabilities like dyslexia and adults who may have a hard time distinguishing colors on a web page because of low contrast. Defining the groups affected by this is far too large for a paper of this size, so instead I will be focusing on readability within designs. People who are affected by readability are a large group. Many people within the US have issues with sight, and even people with learning disabilities are affected in similar ways.
Readability can be affected by many different design choices. Far too often, it starts with low contrast, then moves to clutter, then to overwhelming amounts of information. With this precedent, we can examine what is positive and negative in these areas. A designer may not notice these problems because the design may still be readable and understandable to them. However, the same design can become significantly more difficult for someone with a visual or learning disability. This creates a situation where the designer's experiences lead them to design for themselves rather than others.
For example, as someone who was a kid with a learning disability, I had a hard time reading most books, and I still do. Oftentimes, books use too small a font and focus on putting as many words on a page as possible. This created an effect where I couldn't read all of the words on the page because they just looked like a "river of ink" to my younger self. In my designs, I personally take the time to make sure that this "river of ink" never appears when I am reading over my text when I can. But sometimes it is unavoidable given what the instruction is from above.
Low contrast is one of the simplest other examples of this problem. Text that is placed too closely in color to its background may look visually appealing to a designer, while being difficult for a person to read. When additional elements are added to the product, such as excessive images, decorative texts, or even animations, the information meant to be conveyed becomes lost. Instead of helping the user find the information they need, the interface makes it harder to locate and understand.
These issues can affect more than just people who have a disability; many older adults often experience changes in vision as well. Even people without disabilities in lower light environments may struggle to read a piece of paper or a user interface.
Now there are many ways to go about fixing the issue we have outlined, but many of the fixes so far have always had some weird drawbacks that not many people have talked about. One possible solution is to provide designers with more accessibility tools directly within the programs they already use. Figma is one of the most popular UI/UX design tools, yet many accessibility checks still rely on plugins and outside resources. One example is a contrast ratio detector that is very popular. This tool checks the colors being used in a design and determines whether the contrast is the proper amount for users with visual impairments. While it is a plugin that strictly goes off of math and might not be able to check everything that a properly trained designer could, it is still an amazing tool that helps speed up the process of making designs accessible.
While designers can access these types of tools to perform this function, the fact that designers often have to modify their programs and seek out third-party tools for something like this is ridiculous. Especially in the modern day, where accessibility on websites and apps is growing increasingly harder to find, it would make sense to include it in the programs.
This creates an interesting consequence for designers. If accessibility tools were easy to access and integrated directly into the design process, designers are more likely to use them consistently. However, if accessibility requires designers to install additional plugins, use Figma's terrible plugin search feature, visit outside websites, or manually check their work, it becomes another step that can be forgotten or just skipped entirely.
This is especially concerning when designers are working under the normal work week with strict, often insane deadlines due to how businesses operate in modern day. A designer who is already trying to finish a project may prioritize completing the visual design and functionality of the product before checking whether every element is accessible. Making accessibility tools easier to use would therefore reduce some of the subconscious barriers created in and during the design processes that we designers use every day.
Technology alone sadly cannot solve all of the problems that the average designer encounters day to day; there is a strong human aspect too. Designers without disabilities need to develop an understanding of those who do have disabilities. Sushil K. Oswal argues, "We as designers must develop humility about our expertise and honor disabled users as the owners of privileged knowledge about their bodies…" (Oswal, 2019). Learning humility is something that many designers need to develop outside of their normal teachings in classes.
It takes many years to train a proper designer in the first place; many designers only get to their position with a myriad of years of hard work. But this does not mean that they automatically understand the experiences of people with disabilities who use products developed by designers every day. Listening to disabled users and recognizing their experiences as valuable forms of knowledge can help designers identify problems that they might otherwise overlook.
However, this solution also has its consequences despite how good a solution it may be as stated before, it takes many years of training to become a professional designer in the first place. Many designers only reach their positions after years of education, years of hard work, and diligence. Adding additional empathy and accessibility training would require more time and money from educational institutions and employers. Companies, which many are primarily concerned with reducing costs in the modern day, are less willing to invest in additional training. This is especially true if they believe they can hire less experienced designers for less money. This creates a difficult situation where accessibility is recognized as important but is not given enough resources during the actual design process.
So, after all of this, what is the real solution? There is no solution that has zero negative consequences here. But I feel the one that works the best with the least amount of negative backfire is a new teaching that should be taught more to designers everywhere: Design is not art; design serves a function; design can be art, but it should first serve a purpose.
The reason this changes things with the least amount of consequences is that many artists see themselves as designers and vice versa. This is what leads to all of the errors in the first place, usually out of artistic or enhancing visual intent; the pattern of forgetting that designs need to serve a function takes over. This inevitably leads to things that look pretty, but are not accessible. It is possible to have something be functional and pretty, but it is not possible to have something be pretty and functional.
An example of this is dyslexia fonts. As someone with dyslexia, there is nothing I hate more than these fonts. They don't read better than Times New Roman; they only flow and look better to people who don't have dyslexia. Sushil K. Oswal says that, "They (users with disabilities) experience the frustrations of failure with our designs due to our inability to connect with them, see their ways of thinking, doing, and experiencing technology, and drawing on their cumulative knowledge about different bodily experiences." (Oswal, 2019). Without needing to spend the money to teach these perspectives, approaching design with function first only changes one aspect of the design process for many and still accommodates users with disabilities at the same time!
A good example of this solution applied in a way that is in use by millions of people daily is New York City Transit Authority's signage and Japan's Ministry of Land and Transport's disability accommodations. The New York City Transit Authority has a strict design code that they have followed for years. You, the person reading this, can access the New York City Transit Authority Design Document online for free and see how much effort was put into making their designs accessible to those with disabilities.
All of the signage is designed with function before beauty in mind, using high contrast ratios to make it readable to everyone! The same principle can be applied to accessibility more broadly. A designer should not have to wait until the end of a project to ask whether a person with a disability can even read their product. High contrast ratios serve this purpose perfectly and are one of the many functional choices that can later be made to look good. In New York, they make the metro signs look good with proper spacing, colors, and alignments.
In Japan, they use special audio cues to help those with impaired sight find the exit. Amanda Yee writes, "By implementing bird sounds and jingles, a person who is visually impaired disabled to navigate their way through the complexities of the station and make it to their destination." (Yee, 2023). This is a good example of a functional design aligning with the natural world to create something unnoticeable by the average passerby but still helps those who need it! Starting with functionality, they were able to build upon it to make it different.
Ultimately, the function-first approach does not eliminate every problem in UI/UX design. If it did, then everyone would be using it; designers still make mistakes, and accessibility tools will still have limitations. However, changing the mindset behind the design process can address the problem before it ever becomes one. Making the world more accessible to those with disabilities while also having the ability to make it look pretty later.
That is the main change I believe needs to happen in UI/UX Design. Accessibility shouldn't be an afterthought when the design is finished. It should be a part of what makes the design successful in the first place. A design serves a practical function; it is not art, but it can be!
References:
Merriam-Webster. (2026). Ableism. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 17, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ableism
Sredojevic, T. (2025, December 11). Ableist design: Challenging systemic norms. UX Magazine. https://uxmag.com/articles/ableist-design-challenging-systemic-norms
Oswal, S. K. (2019). Breaking the exclusionary boundary between user experience and access: Steps toward making UX inclusive of users with disabilities. Proceedings of the 37th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328020.3353957
Yee, A. (2023, April 5). Assistive technology: Birdsong in Japanese train stations. Medium. https://medium.com/@amandayeee/assistive-technology-birdsong-in-japanese-train-stations-2b5d4e9926a2