Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
Summary
Many organizations struggle with justifying and prioritizing accessibility. One of the primary reasons is because they’re thinking about accessibility all wrong. Instead of a checklist, a list of legal requirements, or a set of shackles holding designers and developers back, it’s time to start thinking of accessibility as what it is: an opportunity to innovate! In this presentation, Fable will draw from our expertise helping organizations like yours start the accessibility journey, to change the way you think about disability, assistive technology, and accessibility. We will demonstrate that accessible products are more flexible, customizable, and useful for all users. We’ll also show you how accessibility is directly tied to the creation of many of the most exciting and innovative technologies of the last 50 years, and how it’s changed the entire world for everyone. This presentation will inspire you with the information and ideas you need to accelerate your accessibility journey.
Key Insights
-
•
Many accessibility features like dark mode and voice assistants began as disability aids and are now mainstream because they improve experiences for all users.
-
•
One in five people live with long-term disability, and everyone can experience situational or temporary disabilities throughout life.
-
•
Accessible design is about creating flexible, customizable products rather than oversimplified or lowest-common-denominator solutions.
-
•
Diverse teams lead to innovative, inclusive products by uncovering use cases and solutions that homogeneous teams might miss.
-
•
Accessibility is a journey, not a one-time checklist fix, and must be integrated continuously into research, design, and development.
-
•
Disability is a universal and changing identity, highlighting that accessible products design for our future selves.
-
•
Humanizing accessibility by involving people with disabilities in training and product testing builds empathy and better buy-in.
-
•
Major companies like Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft embed accessibility as part of their core product experiences, showing its feasibility.
-
•
Innovations originally designed for accessibility, such as GPS and electric toothbrushes, often become more widely adopted because they offer superior usability.
-
•
Data sonification and advanced APIs allow vision-challenged users to access complex visual data like graphs in new ways, signaling ongoing innovation.
Notable Quotes
"Dark mode started off as an accessibility feature for visual challenges and eventually became mainstream because it’s so valuable for everyone."
"Everyone uses voice assistance now, whether controlling a smart home or sending a quick text; it gives independence to people with disabilities and convenience to all."
"Disability is the only identity that all of us will probably adopt at some point during our lives."
"If we are designing experiences that don’t work for everyone today, we’re designing experiences that in a couple of years will exclude ourselves."
"Accessible design is not about shackles or lowest-common-denominator; it’s about building great, flexible experiences for everyone."
"The Last of Us 2 was the first console game a completely blind person could play from start to finish by adding innovative, customizable accessibility features."
"Separate accessible designs are never equal, so we must design inclusively from the start to unlock all the benefits of accessibility."
"It is cheaper and better to do accessibility right the first time than to retrofit and fix later."
"Bringing people with disabilities into ideation and prototyping helps build accessibility by design and eliminates costly retrofits."
"Disability is normal, not shameful or rare, and everyone can benefit from accessibility innovations."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Sometimes the solution perceives the problem in the eyes of users, especially in enterprise spaces."
Alexandra SchmidtEnterprise UX Playbook
December 1, 2022
"We have maintained that freshness and acceptance of new ideas while growing rapidly."
Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani PahwaCulture, DIBS & Recruiting
June 11, 2021
"If you want to improve the product team’s understanding, frame UX value in terms of their language and goals, not just UX jargon."
Christian CrumlishAMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People
March 24, 2022
"If diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is actually dancing with everyone else."
Libby MaurerTreating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem
December 5, 2019
"Green spaces are not luxuries—they're necessities for urban life."
Ali Jeffery Sheri ChudowHow DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely
October 22, 2020
"Patricia Moore’s aging research revealed how product design often excludes elderly users by living their constraints."
Daniel GloydDesigning From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research
February 12, 2026
"Every student has unique strengths that should be recognized and nurtured."
Kristin SkinnerFive Years of DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"If you frame it as poor first experience risks a negative impact on adoption, you get way more eyeballs and attention."
Johanna KollmannInsights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count
December 6, 2022
"The interface you’ve designed is like a landscape shaping the flow of user behavior as water flows through a stream."
David SternbergUncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior
July 17, 2025