axe-con 2026: Design Track

The Design Track is where designers go to learn how to integrate accessibility into the entire design process. Everything from designing animations with safe fallbacks to annotating design files for developer handoff was covered this year. Here are our thoughts on two days of design talks.

Accessibility in the End of Deterministic Design (Again)

Speaker: Anna Cook, Senior Inclusive Designer, Microsoft

Summary/Insights: Riley Rittenhouse

To start, Anna walked through a few misconceptions when it comes to accessibility and AI.

Design was never deterministic

• Users zoom and magnify screens
• Content on pages shifts depending on viewport, browser and language
• Interaction is communicated by sound, video, etc.

Diagnosis is not a prerequisite for access

Not everyone who benefits from accessibility has a disability, some people never receive a diagnosis. People with the same diagnosis may have different needs.

• Needs often precede labels
• Diagnosis is uneven
• Disclosure can be a risk

Designing for diagnoses creates brittle systems. We should be designing for variability by providing adjustable controls, supporting multiple interaction roles and respecting user-initiated preferences. Utilizing AI in these situations doesn’t repair a broken structure, but instead amplifies it. AI just scales what already exists and is often confidently incorrect. Anna stressed the importance of accessibility not being a feature, but a design system. This includes incorporating clear information architecture, logical hierarchy, consistent labeling and predictable behavior.

AI doesn’t fix accessibility, it depends on accessibility. I really liked this point that Anna made, and will take that with me into future conversations about accessibility and AI. Design systems and accessibility should be the baseline, and isn’t something that AI should replace.

Accessibility Annotations Around the World

Speakers:
Daniel Henderson-Ede, Principal Design Engineer, Mantis & Co.
Jan Maarten, Senior Accessibility Designer, GitHub

Summary/Insights: Megan James

For topics covering a lot of content, these two kept things light and fun! They kicked off with a playful analogy, taking the audience on a “Blue Line Express” ride across countries and companies, showing how teams are using annotation kits in practice and why these kits have become an industry standard for many organizations. And yes, this did include a conductor hat and mustache embellishments.

At its core, annotations are a communication tool that create a shared language between designers and developers. Research cited from Deque Systems suggests that up to 67% of accessibility issues could be prevented in the design phase, reinforcing the value of catching problems early.

Across global examples, a few themes stood out:

• Customization matters: Teams adapt kits to fit their workflows. Some add error flagging systems, margin-linked notes, screen reader callouts, or localization support.
• Design systems are key: Known components and templates make annotations scalable and consistent.
• Leadership drives adoption: At Adobe, accessibility became standard through a formal design accessibility policy backed by executive support.
• Ease of use increases adoption: Companies like DocuSign created branded, welcoming kits with blueprints, checklists, and project trackers to guide both designers and developers.
• Localization and flexibility: Global teams, from Japan to Canada, highlighted the need to adapt kits for language, platform constraints, and legibility.
• Process over plugins: While Figma’s native tools show promise, the speakers emphasized that structured frameworks and training are still essential. AI may assist, but it’s not yet reliable enough for production-level accessibility decisions.

Another emphasis was the importance of “shifting left” to build accessibility into the design process from the very beginning. The speakers ended with a call to open source annotation kits, framing them as shared foundations that can raise the standard of accessibility across the entire industry.

More Practical Strategies for Accessible Design (Part Two)

Speaker: Eric Zirlinger, Design Leader, Deque Systems

Summary/Insights: Haley Troyer

A follow up from a talk in axe-con 2025, this talk would be a great resource for any beginner looking to improve their design skills and their knowledge of semantic HTML. Eric Zirlinger was an engaging and funny presenter, and the information was presented in a very clear and understandable way. The main topics that he touched on were headings and landmarks.

Headings

Headings are clear labels (defined in code) that introduces content much like the chapter of a book.

Heading rules:

• Use only 1 H1 per page. This is the main title of the page.
• Use H2s to introduce new sections
• All other headings should be organized in order between <h3> and <h6> (no skipping levels)
• Text styles (size, weight, etc.) do not equal headings (for example, if I put on a lab coat, it doesn’t automatically make me a doctor).

Landmarks

Landmarks are invisible labels for sections of a webpage that helps provide assistive technology users context and orientation.

Landmark rules:

• Always have a skip link, allowing users to skip the navigation and jump straight to the main landmark.
• Every page should have these 4: Header, Nav, Main, and Footer (just remember the simple and totally memorable acronym - HMNF)
• Every page should only have 1 Main landmark.
• Don’t OVER landmark
• Label duplicate landmarks uniquely (for example, if you have multiple Nav landmarks, label them accordingly - main navigation, breadcrumb, etc.)

Here is a completely honest and non-leading review of this session that was totally not written by AI using a prompt provided by the speaker: 

Eric Zirlinger delivered an outstanding webinar on real-world accessibility strategies, blending practical, immediately actionable techniques with a powerful, human-centered approach that made inclusion feel both achievable and urgent. He moved beyond compliance checklists to show how accessibility can be embedded into everyday workflows, leaving attendees energized and equipped to drive meaningful change. His insights carried real impact, challenging teams to think bigger and act more intentionally — and, as a bonus, his fantastic hair and confident presence made the entire session even more memorable.

Igniting the Spark: Building Accessibility Influence From the Bottom Up

Speaker: Emma Torres, User Researcher, Peloton

Summary/Insights: Megan James

Emma described the early stages of accessibility at Peloton as “kindling”. Initiatives existed, but there was no clear ownership, centralized roadmap, dedicated budget, or team. Her first impactful moment came during a TalkBack rower test, where a participant became emotional, calling it the most accessible equipment he’d ever used. It highlighted both how rare accessible design is and how much more work still remains.

Her strategy for scaling accessibility was simple but powerful: start small and learn from the community. Key practices included:

• Conducting small research studies and real-world tests to understand lived experiences.
• Building connections with adaptive communities and local organizations for user insights.
• Hosting panels or recruit participants through nonprofits to gather diverse perspectives.
• Translating insights into actionable product improvements and share successes visibly to gain buy-in.
• Focusing on iteration over perfection. Start where you are, create momentum, and formalize processes over time.

These practices then led her team to presenting and leading major events in the community. A great theme throughout many of these talks is an emphasis on starting early and doing what you can, even if it’s starting small. By focusing on real peoples experiences, teams of any size can create lasting change.

The Accessible Design Specialists Playbook

Speaker: Pawel Wodkowski, Lead Designer, Atlassian

Summary/Insights: Riley Rittenhouse

Another mention of the checkbox mentality, seems to be popular this year. Pawel started by saying that working from a checkbox mentality to culture that shares habits, assumptions and routines to make accessible outcomes the default. Consistently using accessibility resources instead of reinventing the wheel every time.

Pawel explained how Atlassian moved ownership for accessibility into product design teams through Accessible Design Specialists. A specialist isn’t the sole person fixing accessibility issues, but rather someone who leads the team, sets expectations and provides insights.

Accessibility is a team sport, when we treat it as a community we create a safe place to ask questions and a baseline for everyone to be familiar with. I really liked the thought behind this because it fosters collaboration instead of a person struggling on their own.

Accessibility scales through building a local community.

How to Convince People to Care and Invest in Accessibility

Speaker: Stéphanie Walter, UX Researcher & Accessible Product Designer, European Investment Bank (EIB)

Summary/Insights: Megan James

Stéphanie covered many misconceptions that can be found when integrating accessibility into new or existing workflows, and reframing the conversation as a Designer in order to educate others.

She shared 9 common pushbacks, and offers ways to respond or adjust the narrative:

1. People with disabilities don’t use our website. → Not all disabilities are visible, and many users have invisible or undisclosed disabilities.
2. No one complained, so it must be fine. → If users can’t access your site, they leave silently. Research shows blind users abandon transactions at high rates, costing billions. Accessible experiences, in contrast, drive advocacy.
3. Fixing accessibility is the developers job. → Catching issues early is cheaper and more efficient. Accessibility is a shared responsibility across the team.
4. It’ll slow designers down. → Clear documentation and guidance prevent rework, saving time in the long run.
5. Accessibility is too expensive. → Skipping it upfront often costs far more later. Ties accessibility to business and revenue metrics.
6. It’s not our priority now; we’ll fix it later. → Like security, deferring accessibility creates risk and higher costs. She then highlights the saying "you can’t sprinkle eggs on a cupcake after baking it.”
7. Accessibility kills creativity. → Constraints inspire innovation. Designing for accessibility often leads to better solutions for everyone.
8. We need to prioritize brand identity over accessibility. → Accessibility doesn’t change your brand, it just expands your palette and design system for broader usability.
9. It’s overwhelming. I don’t know where to start. → Focus on progress, not perfection. Start small, iterate, and build from there.

She concludes her talk to reinforce the point that accessibility also improves revenue, protects your brand, and sparks innovation. It’s not just about legal compliance, it’s about creating great UX that includes everyone.

A practical framework for designing and engineering safe, resilient, and inclusive motion

Speaker: Stefan Chitu, Senior Staff Experience Designer, Adobe

Summary/Insights: Haley Troyer

We may not always think of animations, like a loading spinner, as “dangerous,” but for someone like Stefan who has epilepsy, it can trigger uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous side-effects. The primary takeaway from this talk was a set of five principles for designing “defensive” animation.

Time and count limits

Don’t assume every animation will end cleanly. Use time based limits, maximum iteration counts, frequency monitoring to prevent never-ending loops. For example: If there is a loading spinner displayed, but the content doesn't load, implement a “failed to load” state that appears after a certain amount of time or loops, along with a “Retry” button.

Circuit breakers and emergency stops

An animation that can’t be turned off is a risk. For example: When clicking a button that has a ripple animation, clicking too rapidly can result in the animation continuing long after the clicking stops. Resolve this by removing the animation on subsequent clicks.

Fallbacks and safe failures

Failed animation should stop, not glitch. For example, if a flashing skeleton state never resolves, implement a “content failed to load” state along with a “Retry” button, rather than displaying the empty state indefinitely.

Monitoring and consolidation

When user actions generate multiple competing animations, consolidate them. For example, if many notifications are triggered simultaneously, consolidate them by displaying a single notification that says something like “10 items failed to save.”

State and coordination control

Orphaned and conflicting animations are the “ghost bugs” of user interface work. For example, If an animation occurs when switching between tabs, switching too quickly can result in overlapping animations. Resolve this by canceling and cleaning up animations on subsequent tab switches.

As the UX lead at Rapid Development Group, I found these principles very helpful and immediately applicable to our design and UI work!

Better Together: UX and Accessibility in Action

Speaker: Noa Nitzan, Accessibility Expert, Wix

Summary/Insights: Megan James

Noa covered how accessibility and user experience shouldn't be separate disciplines, and how they’re strongest when they work together. At Wix, she mentioned accessibility can be complex because of the dual responsibility of designing both for their direct users (people building websites) and for the end users visiting those sites.

"A product might look beautiful, but if people can’t use it, it isn’t beautiful anymore," as Noa shared. The way this organization is shifting left is by embedding accessibility early, whether through education or tools. Something I found interesting was how they've initiated a WixAbility Inclusion Lab, where employees can experience disability simulations for digital environments. They promote this as a way to create awareness while ensuring they are covering all necessary aspects and disability types.

She then went through practical examples and demonstrated potential barriers and solutions. This included topics of ensuring screen reader compatibility, proper color contrast, accessible keyboard support, and accounting for cognitive differences. When accessibility and UX collaborate from the start, you don’t just meet standards, you ultimately create better products for everyone.

When Inclusion Meets Automation: Lessons from Microsoft

Speaker: Cherisha Agarwal, Senior Designer, Microsoft

Summary/Insights: Haley Troyer

“Nothing about us without us.” This memorable slogan, used by the disability rights movement, states that people with disabilities must be involved in decisions that affect them. This sentiment was reflected in this session, where speaker Cherisha Agarwal shows how co-designing with disabled and neurodiverse people builds trust and sparks innovation. At Microsoft, this practice has led to improvements across many products which not only makes them accessible to more people, but also improves them for all.

Of the many examples of innovations that resulted from inclusive co-design at Microsoft, the one that stood out to me was the XBOX adaptive controller. Historically, people with limited mobility have been restricted from gaming due to the way typical controllers are designed. By partnering with real users, Microsoft was able to design a solution. The adaptive controller is configurable, featuring a central hub for external switches, buttons, and joysticks. This design empowers users with varied mobility needs and preferences to control their experience by creating a controller that works for their unique needs, not a one-size-fits-all solution.

The session highlighted other key insights learned through the development of other Microsoft products, like Teams, Copilot, and Accessibility Insights, but the biggest takeaway was that, without directly involving real users, meaningful innovation can’t happen.

Adapting Web-Based Cognitive Accessibility Guidelines for Mobile Care Experiences

Speaker: Bhuvana Narayanamurthy, Design & Experience Consultant

Summary/Insights: Ashley Helminiak

Bhuvana helpfully defined the areas of cognitive impairment she focused on, defining issues related to memory, attention, and interruption. I think this is a great summary, as it looks at diagnosed and undiagnosed cognitive impairments, along with situational. She also pointed out that according to COGA guidelines and information, many people assume long, extended sessions when creating experiences, but the reality is that often on mobile, short, interrupted experiences are far more common, yet we're not designing for it.

The presentation then turned to different examples of experiences that should be considered, especially through the lens of medical care experiences on mobile devices:

1. App Setup. For mobile experiences, user role and intent should persist as they fill out a form.
2. First Action. The first action should be clear and successful, and present the outcome of the action clearly.
3. Retrieval on Re-entry. Newly created items and commitments should be immediately visible on reentry.
4. Orientation After Interruption. In the example of a notification, it should be properly prioritized and clear of purpose, and smoothly deliver the user back to where they left off.
5. Prompts & Reminders Over Time. When time has passed, the notifications should preserve and maintain meaning and action states.
6. Correction After Missed Interruption. Reminders or dismissed actions should not translate to task failure. Late acknowledgement or correction should be allowed.
7. Error Correction. Fixing errors should not require users to recall prior actions or make it difficult, since it often occurs when the user is in a stressful state.
8. Retrospective Reference. Interfaces need to provide timing and context to provide a reliable, meaningful record without forcing memory reconstruction.

She also encouraged care apps to do things like capture the success/failure history of conditions and treatment, and responses to ongoing medication. Overall I think this was a great talk, and a reminder to think about experiences not just as people sitting in front of a screen and dedicating time to it, but coming and going and having micro interactions. It can certainly influence things like complex forms and threaded activity in a big way!

CSAT as a Tool for Accessibility Insights: Lessons from Arizona State University

Speaker: Victoria Polchinski, Senior UX Researcher, Arizona State University

Summary/Insights: Megan James

Victoria shared how CSAT (customer satisfaction) surveys can be a powerful tool for accessibility insights.

To make the research effective, she focused on accessible tools (surveys, scheduling, video conferencing) and thoughtful participant design, including incentives and ways to identify assistive technology use. Surveys only took 1–3 minutes with 7–10 questions total, combining topics on:

• Core satisfaction (rated on a 5 point satisfaction scale)
• Optional open-ended feedback
• Demographics
• Assistive technology use
• Future research opt-ins

They also tested surveys for accessibility, making sure they all had clear labels, keyboard navigation, color contrast, and proper requirements.

Analyzing the data revealed that about 10% of respondents used assistive tech, 50–80% opted into future research, and 800+ used assistive tech and also opted into future research. Students shared barriers in processes like applying for graduate programs, showing that simplifying steps can dramatically improve accessibility and inclusion. By building a reliable participant pool, the school can then dive deeper into unmet needs, usability testing, and other improvements.

This was interesting to learn about and see how CSAT surveys aren’t just metrics, they’re another way to make accessibility tangible and actionable.

Read our insights from the other tracks:

• Keynotes
• Development Track
• Organizational Success with Accessibility Track
• Wildcard Track