As a UX designer, I spend my days thinking about how people move through digital spaces. But my understanding of why that work matters didn't come from a checklist or a compliance mandate. It came from watching friends and family members with disabilities navigate a world that wasn't built with them in mind and noticing how often they must pave their own way because a path wasn't made for them. It also came from my own experience with ADHD, which taught me firsthand how much cognitive load, unclear structure, and visual noise can stand between a person and the thing they're trying to do.
Those experiences made me a better, more empathetic designer. When you understand what's at stake for real people, accessibility stops feeling like a requirement and becomes the good and kind thing to do. Often, I compare it to our desire to hold the door open for an elderly person using a walker or to the urgency we feel when we see people in distress.
When the Department of Justice finalized its web accessibility rule in April 2024, many people in tech took notice. The conversation about accessibility had been growing for years, and this felt like the moment it finally got the attention it deserved.
At APAX, we were ready and genuinely excited to help our clients make the most of it.
Accessibility has always been central to our work as experience designers. It’s how we make sure what we build actually works for the people using it. Still, we’ve seen it get pushed aside more times than we’d like to admit. It’s not because of bad intentions, but because deadlines are real and priorities change. The new Title II rule requiring WCAG 2.1, Level AA compliance, helps fix that by making accessibility a clear, legal requirement instead of something to be done later.
Honestly, even with some challenges, we believe this is a win for everyone.
In short, any web content or mobile app offered by a state or local government, or by a vendor working for them, must meet WCAG 2.1, Level AA standards. You can think of WCAG as a checklist of clear, testable items that make digital experiences accessible, like color contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text for images, captions on videos, logical heading structure, and more.
Most of our clients are working toward a compliance deadline of April 24, 2026, with some smaller organizations having a little more runway until April 26, 2027.
Few projects make the stakes of accessibility clearer than our work with Find Help Now (FHN), a statewide platform connecting Kentuckians to mental health treatment, substance use disorder support, naloxone, and recovery housing.
Think about who comes to a site like this you are building for someone in crisis, a family member searching for a loved one's next step or a person who hasn't slept in days. A barrier here isn't a minor UX inconvenience; it can mean someone doesn't get the help they need.
FHN's user base spans every demographic, tech comfort level, and physical ability. Many users arrive in acute stress, with lower literacy levels or cognitive impairments that make clarity non-negotiable. Plain language, simple navigation, and clean visual hierarchy are functional requirements.
This is the curb cut effect at its most human level. Every improvement we make for a screen reader user also helps someone overwhelmed and navigating the site for the first time. When you design for the hardest circumstances, you make things better for every circumstance.
One of our favorite ways to explain accessibility is with the curb cut effect.
When cities first added sloped curb cuts to sidewalks for wheelchair users, something unexpected happened. Everyone began using them: parents with strollers, delivery workers, cyclists, and travelers pulling luggage through airports. A solution made for one group quietly made life easier for almost everyone.
Digital accessibility works the same way. Features we create for users with disabilities often become features everyone appreciates. Captions made for deaf users help people watching videos on mute in coffee shops. High contrast designed for low vision is easier to read in bright sunlight. Keyboard navigation built for motor disabilities is a bonus for power users who prefer not to use a mouse.
That’s the power of building accessibility. You’re not creating a separate experience for a small group—you’re simply making things better for everyone.
The good news is you don’t have to change everything at once to see results. Some of the most important accessibility improvements are actually quite simple:
The curb cut effect reminds us that accessibility isn’t about creating a separate path for a specific group. It’s about building things that simply work better for more people, in more situations, more often.
The new ADA rule sets the mandate. WCAG provides the criteria. And the curb cut effect shows us that many more people benefit from doing this right than we might first think.
The best accessible experiences aren’t compliant by accident. They’re built that way on purpose by teams who decided it mattered before anyone told them it had to. And for some of us, that decision was never really a choice but a way of showing care, supporting, and paying attention to the people we care about.
