A
Designing for the 16% and everyone
Navn
Ida Matilda Hellblom
Uddannelsesgrad
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Design
Institut
Design og Visuel Interaktion
Program
Visuelt Design, Graphic Communication Design
År
2026
Accessibility in graphic design
Around 16% of the world's population has a disability. That's more than a billion people. But disability isn't only something you have; it's also something you can experience. A new parent holding a baby in one arm. A person with a broken wrist, a migraine, a concussion, jet lag, a panic attack or going through stress. Someone who is colour-blind, dyslexic, neurodivergent or navigating a space with a wheelchair. A toddler, or someone in their nineties. Seen this way, disability is less a fixed category or a minority than a wide spectrum, dependent on context and not only on the person. Something that can be situational, temporary, or permanent. Visible or invisible. Physical, mental, cognitive, intellectual or chronic. Something that everyone moves through at some point in their life.
With the European Accessibility Act (EAA) now in full effect, accessibility has shifted from a nice-to-have point to a legal requirement for most digital interfaces across the EU. Yet much of the existing guidance is written in the language of developers, lawyers, and policymakers, leaving many designers uncertain about their own role, responsibilities, or how to approach and use it in practice.
This project brings together new legislation, technical standards such as WCAG 2.2, recent design research, interviews with practitioners, and perspectives from online disability communities to answer some of the questions graphic designers have about accessibility. It is, in a way, an attempt to make information about accessibility a little more accessible to graphic designers, and to look at how designing for the 16% can open up better, more considerate design for everyone.
"What's important is to think about access and inclusion throughout the whole design process and that it's not just this rather boring category in the end."
– Jos Boys, architect, author and consultant; co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project.
The idea for the book, was to function both as a reference or resource about accessibility, and as an example of accessible design in practice. Each design decision has been stress-tested for accessibility. The pictures below are of legibility in a typeface and distinction between a typefaces letters, as well as of the colour palette run through of different types of colourblindness and sensory sensitivity, testing hue and contrasts.
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Presenting information in more than one way is a core accessibility principle, as people do not always access, process, or understand information through the same senses or formats. A video with captions, an image with alt text, a diagram supported by written explanation, or spoken information repeated visually all make the same content available to more people in more situations. This is reflected in WCAG 2.2, especially under the principle of being “Perceivable,” meaning information must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive.
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“Those who have a genuine passion for accessibility should advocate for it. Not everyone will have that passion — and not everyone has to. But everyone needs to understand it, respect it, and recognise that they share responsibility for how people are able to access things.”
– Louise From, Principal Product Designer & Senior UI Designer at Charlie Tango
Det Kongelige Akademi understøtter FN’s verdensmål
Siden 2017 har Det Kongelige Akademi arbejdet med FN’s verdensmål. Det afspejler sig i forskning, undervisning og afgangsprojekter. Dette projekt har forholdt sig til følgende FN-mål
