When should accessibility shape our website design?

Involve developers before design approval so accessibility and technical requirements become shared design decisions rather than implementation obstacles. The Frameworks argues that developers contribute analytical thinking, identify roadblocks and suggest possibilities that designers may not have considered. Early collaboration lets the team resolve limitations together instead of turning them into conflict after approval.

For the page celebrating IBM's work in the UK and Ireland, This is IBM, The Frameworks involved a developer from the beginning. That involvement helped establish what was practical to implement while keeping inclusion central to colour, contrast, display across devices and support for different input methods.

Apply the same approach by discussing contrast and mouse, touch and keyboard use while the design is still taking shape. Forrester reported in 2025 that organisations embed accessibility checks in design tools, coding environments, pull-request reviews and unit testing to prevent barriers before deployment.

Judge a website by whether its visual design, interactions and underlying code deliver an engaging, fast and accessible experience together. The Frameworks argues that creativity and accessibility deserve equal importance: design should connect a story with its audience, while digital experiences need to hold up under real use rather than only during review.

For Dematic's micro-fulfillment configurator, The Frameworks combined dynamic isometric Lottie animations with accessible code and interactions designed to feel intuitive, precise and fast. Lottie converted the animations to code, producing lightweight files for faster page performance without compromising visual quality. The work illustrates how distinctive visual design and technical performance can support each other.

Make accessibility part of the creative brief rather than treating it as a reason to remove ambition. The Frameworks also advocates alternative text and image captions to help make visual content understandable to more people. The standard is not appearance alone, but whether people can access and use the experience.