As it happens, we are all doing our best. Sometimes though the lines in design get blurred when scrappy talented teams take on every position in the office (Ahem non-profits you get me). In a Friday coffee chat the creative team at Gerbo talked about the pain points of design, and we find the one that pops up the most and centered in good intention, but can be a big miss, is understanding how ADA Compliance functions within design systems.
Its arguably confusing and even we had a hard time finding standards that were cross functional from digital to print. Accessibility does not live in one place. It relates to legal requirements, ethical design practices, usability and the lived experience of the people interacting with the work. It shows up in color choices, contrast levels, typography, spacing, motion and even in how information is layered or prioritized.
Most small teams are already stretched, often without a dedicated accessibility or UX specialist to call on. So it becomes something people care about, but do not always feel equipped to handle in a consistent or confident way. The intention is there. The clarity is not always.
This is where we realized we needed to slow down and build a shared understanding inside our own team. Not to chase perfection, but to create a common language and a simple set of practices that can work whether we are designing a website, a poster, a street banner or a printed program. Something practical and workable that reduces confusion instead of adding to it.
Why ADA Compliance Matters
At its core, accessibility is about making sure people can participate. It is about dignity, belonging and ease. When a person cannot read a menu because the type is too small or the contrast is too low, they are not just missing information. They are being excluded from the experience. The same is true for a website that is difficult to navigate, a flyer with stylized type that is hard to read, or signage that disappears in certain lighting.
Design touches how people move through the world. It shapes how they feel, what they notice, what they understand and whether they feel considered. When we create with accessibility in mind, we are not just meeting a requirement, we are extending care.
There is also a very practical truth, accessible design is clearer design. When something is visually or functionally accessible, it works better for the full audience, not just for those with specific needs.
Design is not decoration, it is communication, and communication is only successful when people can understand, feel included and stay with us in the experience we are creating.
The Confusion: Why It Feels Hard
This came up recently while working on updated brand materials. The brand palette itself is ADA compliant. Each color swatch meets accessibility guidelines on its own. The confusion came from how those compliant colors interact when placed together.
Accessibility is not just about having enough contrast. It is also about avoiding combinations that create too much contrast, which can cause visual vibration or static. When there is heavy contrast between text and background without balance, the eye has to work harder to focus. This can make the design feel overwhelming instead of clear.
We saw this during the production of a flyer. The designer pointed out that the colors she chose were ADA compliant, and she was correct in that they passed individual compliance checks. But when they were paired together, the intensity of the contrast made the text visually buzz. It created a loud effect on the page. The intention was good, but the outcome strained the viewer’s eye.
The same situation appeared on public signage. The colors technically obeyed the guidelines on paper, but in real-world scale and lighting, the combination became harsh to look at. This is something accessibility standards try to protect against. Legibility should feel comfortable and steady, not like the text is vibrating.
In moments like this, people often reach for the quick fix. A text bubble behind a word. A highlight shape. A box around a phrase. These patches usually do more harm than good. They introduce extra visual weight and noise, and they disrupt the rhythm of the layout. They can also pull the design off brand, because the brand system did not intend for everything to be boxed and framed. It gives the work a cut-and-paste feel rather than a cohesive style. The problem is not lack of intention. The problem is the pairing itself. The solution needs to happen at the decision level, not at the cover up level.
This is what makes accessibility feel confusing. Not because anyone is ignoring it. But because the nuance sits in how colors behave together, not just how they look alone. And those subtleties become clear only when the work enters the real world.
How ADA Compliance Actually Works Inside a Design System
Many teams learn ADA compliance as a checklist. A color is either compliant or not compliant. But that is only the beginning. Accessibility in design is not about individual colors. It is about relationships and functionality. It is how one color sits next to another. How text sits on a background. How interactive elements behave when a person navigates a website. How a design is read in motion. How it is experienced at scale. How it feels in the body and in the eye.
This is where misunderstandings happen.
A color can be ADA compliant on its own and still be inaccessible when paired with another color that is also ADA compliant. The compliance exists at the swatch level. The issue appears at the pairing level. Accessibility lives in the contrast between colors, not in the colors themselves.
This is why two fully compliant brand colors can create visual discomfort when placed together. They may technically meet the standard on paper, but in application they can cause the viewer’s eye to vibrate, blur or strain. Accessibility is about how the work is felt, not just how it scores.
This becomes even more important when the design system stretches across touch points. A website behaves differently from a poster. A poster behaves differently from signage. Outdoor signage behaves differently from print inside a café or library. Lighting, distance and scale all change how a color pairing is perceived. A pairing that is comfortable on a laptop screen can become harsh when scaled to six feet wide outdoors. The environment always affects legibility.
Just like print, web accessibility isn’t only about making something “pass” a test. It is about how the design functions in the real world. And on the web, there are more variables: screen sizes, devices, assistive technologies, connection speeds, motion sensitivity, and cognitive load. A design that looks beautiful in a static mockup can behave very differently once it becomes a living, moving interface.
So when we talk about accessibility inside a brand system, we are really talking about consistency of experience across mediums. The goal is not to memorize rules. The goal is to understand how colors, type and layout behave when they move into the real world. That is the system part. The awareness of how elements work together everywhere, not just on a style guide page.
This is why text bubbles and highlight shapes do not solve the problem. They are added on top of the design instead of being part of the system itself. They create noise, distraction and an off brand feel. When accessibility is addressed upstream in the pairing and layout, the design stays clean, cohesive and grounded in the brand identity.
Accessibility works best when it is a design decision, not a correction.
Realistic Accessibility for Small Teams
Accessibility does not need to be perfect to be meaningful. It can grow over time. Do what you can with the tools and time you have. Choose consistent improvements instead of trying to solve everything at once. Small changes made steadily will shape how your team sees and works.
The goal is progress and awareness, not overwhelm. Accessibility becomes part of the design culture by being practiced in small and repeatable ways, not by creating pressure or fear of doing it wrong.
Closing Reflection
We are all learning and we are all doing our best. Accessibility is not a finish line or a checklist to complete once and forget. It is an ongoing way of paying attention to how our work is experienced by others. This is a process we practice together, through conversation, curiosity and shared observation.