If accessibility has never really come up in your work, it isn’t because you’re careless — it’s because almost nobody teaches it. Not the courses, not the diplomas, and definitely not the platforms we all build on.

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It’s a supportive group mentoring session for website designers and developers to bring their questions, roadblocks, ideas, and “is it just me?” moments.

Welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie.

In this episode of Websites Made Simple, I'm joined by Rachel Mess of The Inclusive Design Company, a website designer and trainer who specialises in accessible websites. Rachel got into accessibility because her sister is visually impaired — and was mortified to realise that in years of web design training, not one course had mentioned it.

Together we cover the single biggest accessibility failure on the internet, why the drag-and-drop components you trust might be unreadable to both screen readers and Google, why “let the website breathe” is an accessibility decision, the argument that finally brings a reluctant client round, why “click here” hurts you twice over, and the free tools you should be running on every site before you hand it over.

🔗 Rachel Mess — The Inclusive Design Company: https://inclusivedesigncompany.co.uk

🔗 Sparks group mentoring: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/sparks-group-mentoring/

🌐 More from Holly: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk

✉️ Email Holly: [email protected]

🎙️ Podcast produced by Podknows Podcasting: https://podknows.co.uk/

Connect with Holly on LinkedIn: Holly Christie.

Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn: Rachel Mess

Chapters:

00:00 Meet Rachel Meess, accessible web design specialist

01:08 How Rachel got into accessibility

01:50 Why accessibility never came up in her training

02:46 “I can’t charge for a website somebody can’t access”

03:09 Web design is a self-taught industry

03:40 Why the platforms are part of the problem

05:21 Accessibility has to be front of mind as you design

05:39 Colour contrast is the biggest issue on the internet

06:14 Dropdowns, div blocks and what a screen reader hears

07:03 If Google can’t read it, nobody sees your content

07:45 Holly’s pet hate: emojis as bullet points

09:07 When industry experts quietly ignore best practice

10:57 Lived experience is good for business

12:49 Consulting with Diversity Scotland

13:38 DEI, blog images and seeing yourself on a website

14:44 Accessibility is the infrastructure inclusion sits on

17:32 Accessibility in your blog posts

17:58 Let the website breathe

20:46 How to bring a reluctant client round

21:32 Why Shopify sites keep coming up

22:42 The contrast checker every platform should build in

24:06 Why “click here” is a problem

25:30 Stop stuffing keywords into alt tags

26:29 Test with Lighthouse and WAVE

27:36 Graphic designers are not website designers

29:04 Where to find Rachel

In this episode, I am joined by Rachel Meess from The Inclusive Design Company.

Rachel is a website designer and a trainer who specializes in accessible websites.

I am so excited to have her here with us today.

I've been trying to get her on the podcast for a while, but she is

one busy person, and she is gonna share so much value with you today.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Websites Made

Simple with me, Holly Christie.

I am a website designer, a website designer's mentor.

I am the host of this podcast, and today I am bringing you everything

you need to know about accessibility because I'm joined by Rachel and we are

going to talk about what accessibility really means, why you need it, what

to consider within it, and where to find the tools and methods within it.

So without further ado, let's get on with the episode.

So y- you have quite an interesting story , if you're happy to share it, with

how come you ended up in accessibility.

So I got into accessibility because my sister is visually impaired

and-- but I always find it quite embarrassing because I'm very used

to, like, considering accessibility almost like out in the real world.

If we are, like, crossing a road or if we're, like, out and I

will read a menu out to her or if we're looking for something in the

shops, I'm very-- I was always very used to considering accessibility

in those sorts of environments.

Um, then I'd got a diploma in UX design, and I'd done quite a

few courses 'cause I really was, like, self-learning, web design.

And when I was in my little design bubble, accessibility actually wasn't really

mentioned in any of these courses, and I honestly hadn't even thought about it,

which I was really embarrassed with, with myself, and I thought that was really…

Honestly, I was like, "How have you not thought about this?" 'Cause

I'm so used to considering it.

but I hadn't, and I'd designed my first website and then was very proud

of it, and I'd made so many mistakes.

And then Hannah came and looked at it and was like, "Oh, that's

really hard to read, and so is that, and so is that, and so is that."

And I was like, "Oh my God." Um, so that is what got me started on kinda learning

about accessibility and all the sort of different layers to it and, yeah,

just the things that you need to do.

Because I think from my perspective, especially being self-taught and just

doing like online courses and even my-- like, my diploma I got, that

was, it was certified by a university, but I done the course at home.

when I realized, I was like, " this is just an obvious thing that you have to do.

I can't be, like, charging businesses money for a website that somebody

potentially can't access it." So I just thought it was just like a normal

part of the job, and it wasn't until I was, like, going out and speaking

with other designers or speaking with other businesses, I realized that

loads of people just don't do it.

And Rachel is far from alone.

Web design is such a self-taught industry.

We all picked it up in different places, diplomas, online courses, or

in my case, sketching wireframes on scraps of paper twenty years ago and

handing them to the IT guys to build.

And in almost none of that learning does accessibility get a proper look in.

It's exactly why I built my course, Understanding Your User's Journey.

You'll find it on the website.

But Rachel believes part of the problem sits somewhere much bigger,

with the platforms we all build on.

And I, but I just think that a big-- I do think that sits really

heavily on the platforms that we use.

That's-- and it's becoming something that annoys me more and more is when

you do have, you have massive, often like US companies like Shopify, like

Squarespace,

like different WordPress themes.

Obviously themes can be ma- can come from all over.

Um, Webflow as well.

I use given what you said is completely right, that web design is such a

self-taught industry, we're coming on and we're like learning a platform

and learning how to build things.

And quite often, I don't know, like the standard form that you can drop in just

doesn't meet accessibility requirements, or you'll add in a picture and it doesn't

automatically ask you to like add an alt tag or to mark it as decorative.

Things like that, and I think what annoys me more is when you

then have, I think especially with like Shopify and Squarespace and

things like that, is they're really marketed towards like independent

business owners, not designers.

So if a lot of designers like aren't being given these, I don't know, like

hints or it's not kind of built into the process for the designers to make

sure things are accessible, like what is the chances that a jewelry designer

or a florist or, you know, somebody who's just like trying to get a little

website together like to promote their business is they're not gonna be able

to make it accessible 'cause they literally have no idea what's supposed

to happen and the platforms themselves aren't making it like the default.

And I think that no matter what platform you're using, accessibility

has to be something that you are thinking of at the forefront.

You know, as you're designing, are these color contrasts right?

You know, is this text legible?

What can I do to work with that?

Yeah.

Honestly, like I would say like 90% of accessibility things is just getting

the basics on your kind of branding right or, I mean, well, I mean, the

biggest issue with accessibility just across the internet is color contrast.

So if you've put in like some extra time and effort to make sure that

you've got, know, high-contrast color pairings, like you've, you've solved

the biggest issue there and then.

After that, it is just that consideration for your font choices, for just

how you're building things out.

I think just how much the internet or like web design platforms and

everything have evolved, it's really easy for us all to maybe like grab, I

don't know, say grab a pre-sale like FAQ dropdown and like drop it into our

website and just be like, "Yep, cool.

I've got an FAQ dropdown." But you don't actually know how it's built

in terms of like what that's gonna sound like to a screen reader user.

Like is it an actual dropdown or is it like div block within a div block

within a div block within a div block?

And you've got like that kind of things that can make it not accessible.

So that's the, where the development side of it comes in.

but overall I do kind of always say that if you get the basics right,

you are like 90% of the way there.

Yeah, and actually it's interesting using kind of accordions and toggles

and drop-downs as an example there as well because I work quite a lot with

Nikki Pilkington, the SEO specialist, and she says in most cases, unless

the accordions, toggles, drop-downs within the theme have been made

accessible, then Google can't read them.

And if Google can't read them, they can't show your content.

It won't come up in AI results.

It won't come up in you know, traditional web results as well.

So it's really important that whether someone's coding something

or whether they're using it as part of a theme, that they actually know.

So I know the theme that I use the toggles and stuff are accessible, so I

do know that.

And that, that there are lots and lots of themes.

And let's talk about my pet hate, and I know that you are not gonna

like this one either 'cause I saw you post a LinkedIn post

about it,

was it?

is when people use, again, I use the checklist function when I want to go

for bullet points sort of thing, because again, checklist functions are accessible.

People using emojis as bullet

points.

And they proudly whack their ChatGPT copy into that website complete with the rocket

emoji and the little alarm clock emoji and

They're just so, ugh, they drive me crazy because in general when it comes to all of

these points about accessibility is that I'm very forgiving when it's like you're

kind of new business owner or you're like small business owner who literally

hasn't got a clue and like about any of this because like kind of why would they?

And they're just like getting advice from other people who are like, "This is what

you should do to boost your engagement.

This is what you should do for this.

This is what you should do." And they're like, "All right.

Okay.

Well, like that person with three million followers says that my

LinkedIn post should start with the checklist and have it as an emoji."

But the person with the three million followers, they know that it's not

best practice 'cause they've been in the game for like a bit longer,

and like they already know it.

They're just choosing to ignore that.

Um, But I think that's what always annoys me is when you have industry experts

that advise like against accessibility best practices and maybe just don't even

me- like they might not even mention it.

I think it wouldn't bother me as much if they were like, "Okay.

I always think that it's best to use emojis for, for your bullet

points because it helps break things up, blah, blah, blah.

It's not accessible, so anyone that's coming across your content who uses a

screen reader, that's gonna be really noisy and a bit confusing, but I prefer

to use it, so I'm advising you to use it."

Then that I would even like respect more.

I'd be like you're at least giving people like

the

the

They can make their own

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But they just kinda don't mention it, and then you've got people that

are just, yeah, firing emojis in

everywhere.

But it's about trying to educate people, isn't it?

And for us, that starts at… For me, that starts at web designer level.

But for you, you know, you're really going out there as the warrior to accessibility.

I love it.

I love seeing people come up on LinkedIn and, you know, with your don't

do this or do do this, or this is my story, or this is my client's story.

Yeah.

Oh, thank you.

I don't know.

It's funny because it- when I first started, it was just like, "Oh,

well, this is just a thing you have to do. It's part of the job." And

but now I honestly, I find it really interesting, and I definitely do still

make mistakes or, learn new things.

Like, somebody will come along and just be like, "Oh, did you know that you

could do this thing instead?" And I'm like, "I didn't, and that's better.

Right.

Let's do that instead.

Cool." Um, like, I don't by any means think that I'm, like, perfect because,

I don't know, perfect is just this unachievable, like, thing that I think

everybody's always, like, striving for.

But I think if you just are as mindful as possible about other people's lived

experiences and how they are interacting with your brand and your business, that's

only ever gonna be good for your business.

You know, if the more people can interact with you easily, can understand what

you do, can get in touch, can buy from you, that's only ever a good thing.

And, I do really yeah, having more of these conversations with organizations

and with businesses who, you know, this hasn't been a conversation that

they've had before, and these can be businesses that have been going

for, like, 10, 20, 30 years, and they've worked with other experts.

But accessibility's just never been a conversation.

and some of these businesses, you know, have got teams.

They've got, like, they've got two or three people that are working on,

like, comms and marketing and things like that, and some of them don't know,

like, basics around accessibility.

So then it's like getting to-- starting to move into those spaces where you're

getting to train more businesses around those basics and putting those things in

place so that just going forward, things are kind of ticking all the right boxes.

I spend a lot of time with clients in the HR space, and, you

know, DEI comes up in it a lot.

And it's something that I always do training on.

I recently did a blogging masterclass with Nikki Pilkington and Kane

Mitchell, and mine was all about the design and styling and that.

And I'm like, your website is always such a good opportunity to approach DEI,

that you have a look at, you know, how you have your blog images, whether your

images you use across the website are, are representative of everybody who would

be rec- you know, seeing your website.

People should be able to recognize themselves within there or a

representation of themselves as well.

And so I know that inclusion and accessibility are two different

things, but I also think of accessibility as inclusion because

if you're doing it right, then people are recognizing themselves or a

representation of themselves within

Yeah.

And accessibility is almost just like the infrastructure that

makes the inclusion part possible.

Because you could say that you're… And it's not to say that, say if you

are an organization and you're like, "We've really not put enough time into,

like, our DEI policies, and we have a very diverse workforce, and we really

want to show that and showcase it.

And we've done a lot of work to make sure that we're a really safe space

for our, like, LGBTQ+ colleagues." And they might do all of those

things, and that's brilliant, and then they should be sharing that.

the website isn't navigational, like, by a screen reader or the text is really small

or there's no alt tags on the images,

then a g- then a potential, like, somebody who does use a screen reader

or somebody who's visually impaired might kinda come across this company

and be like, "Oh, you guys are really-- talk about inclusion a lot.

You guys sound like you have good values.

Oh, wait, I can't read this," or, "Wait, I can't get to that page." Or, you know.

So it's just the, it's the infrastructure that goes into making

the inclusion part all sort of possible.

Yeah, completely.

And I loved how you said earlier as well about lived experience, and I

think that's something that as web designers we can all forget a little bit.

Like, sometimes we can look at the brief, we can look at the design, we

can think, you know, "How am I gonna get from A to B? How am I gonna get from

this Google Doc that's the copy and these images," which are 7,000 pixels at the

time they come to us and stuff, How are we gonna make this into an accessible,

beautiful, fast, SEO'd website?"

And sometimes what we can forget, and again, I work with a lot of

coaches, and so a lot of coaches are sharing their lived experience.

And I would often say if they've handwritten their websites and not had

a copywriter doing it, they often share too much of their lived experience,

and it's about kind of bringing it

round.

But what they, not just coaches, you know, what website owners and

website designers sometimes can forget is the end user's lived experience

as well, and how they're accessing things and what they're accessing.

From there, Rachel and I put the world to rights on favorite colors.

The short version, your favorite color is not a brand strategy.

Red will always mean stop, and the contrast checker outranks us all.

We also confessed that web designers are the absolute worst

at updating our own websites.

The cobbler's children have no shoes, and mine are barefoot.

Because where accessibility really shows up is in the everyday content

your clients actually touch, and that starts with the humble

blog post.

blog posts is a great one to actually, talk about accessibility with because

I, in my website manuals as well, I am teaching clients how to upload

blog posts, why to upload blog posts.

This is what all the blogging masterclass was about as well.

And there's always a really strong focus on accessibility and things like

using kind of columns or margins so that people are only ever reading a maximum

of two-thirds of the screen if they're reading left to right texts and spacing.

I'm always known for, you know, I mentor website designers and some of that will be

around design and like, you know, they'll turn up and they'll screen share and

they're like, "I can't make it work." I'm always known for saying, "Let the website

breathe." You know, use a lot of space.

The more space you put around something, the easier that someone

can see it, and that's so important.

Sometimes we want a design to be tight, the- that's not gonna work

very well for people with dyslexia.

there's always exceptions to rules, isn't there?

Or there's always people that are, like, the exception to a rule.

But I'm very much like you.

I'm like, give things space.

And I always like things to be, like, very even.

So I've, if I've got, like, say, like, service, links or, yeah, if

I've got link blocks that are going to different pages and they're, say, in

a row of three or four, I want all of them to be the same size with, like,

even spacing between all of them.

I want there to be even spacing within them.

But sometimes you are working with a, a client who struggles with that, like,

kind of keeping things, like, the same, giving the same amount of information

or, or things like that, and you end up going like, "Oh, this is bigger than that

one," or, there's much more information in this box than there is in that."

And so trying to, like, educate clients a lot of being like, "We

really want this to have, like, seven words like, five to eight words in

this box. Like, I really don't want any more," 'cause otherwise things

can't breathe and things look messy.

And yeah, so I think that that's a sort of, can be an ongoing thing

in particular client relationships

Uh, yeah.

And I think there's… I mean, I will just go in and edit the client's

text to get that seven words and I'll be like, "Every… I changed

the text so that it all lined up." The theme I use you can put

separators in, like, which have no styling, so it's just separate.

And you can get it to, uh, flex to the kind of height of the rest

of the container because one of my my absolute are when, you know,

someone says, "Look at our brand new website," and the website's beautiful.

And then you have three co- three columns, you know, that have colored backgrounds

or whatever, and They're all different

heights.

And it's like, go back to your designer and level them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

is no excuse

Yeah.

Yep, yep, yep.

that's just my

No, I'm the same.

I have definitely had, like, a couple of, tricky projects where

the team have been very like, "No, no, like, we want less space here.

There's too much space." And I'm like, "There's, there's not.

There's not too much space.

Like,

I know.

It's just laughing.

you're wrong.

You're wrong.

There's not too much space.

The space is there for a reason.

It's really important." but it's hard, isn't it? When it's a, when it's a client

and they are, like, your paycheck and how you're going to pay your bills that,

that month, and you're like, "Okay.

Okay.

We'll just-"

I do find that the more I explain to people why I've done something the

way I have, you know, and say, "Oh, I put this here because of this,"

or, "I've done this because of that," the more that I do that, the more

likely they are to embrace that.

But I would say as well, I do use the… If it's for accessibility, you know,

if it needs space for accessibility, I say, "The thing is, there are website

owners who have been sued because their websites aren't accessible, and

usually that gets people in your camp."

That's a good

one.

That's true.

Yeah.

that is true.

owners have been sued.

And I mean, mainly it's been in America, and I have looked up the

legalities around it, and it's generally an individual who will sue rather

than a company, but companies have.

And this just out there for website developers, 'cause we've already mentioned

it as a platform, it is a really good choice sometimes for solo business owners.

But my understanding is, so what I mean is this is not based by stats or data or

in any way, it's from being in web design groups and that, my understanding is that

the most website groups that have been sued successfully are Shopify websites.

Oh.

And I would say the Shopify themes are beautiful.

And I have built using Shopify 'cause sometimes it's a really good option for

people.

They are absolutely beautiful, but you do need to know what you're doing.

And I know that if I see a website on like a Facebook or Insta ad or

something like that, and I get sucked into the website because it's really

beautiful, it's always a Shopify site.

And I think that Shopify have got it worked out really well that, you

know, you have to work within their templates, within their structure.

What they can't do is say to someone, "Don't put like a pale

creamy beige on top of a white," or, "Don't put white writing on top of

a sandy color," or whatever else.

There's only… That's what they need.

They need an accessibility checker in their

They need like a little, I think their, Webflow used to have this thing and

they got rid of it, where when you were selecting like your text color, it would

rec- it, it was like in the backend it recognized what background color was

gonna be behind that, and it would give you like the A, AA, AAA like rating like

there and then as you were doing it.

And I always really liked that feature because, I mean, I've already gone and

tested things anyway before I'm like putting a color palette into the website.

But I thought that's a really nice little way that if somebody was in, if a

client's like taken over the website, if you transfer it out to them, it's been

two years and they've decided I'm gonna put yellow text on a white background,

like then they'll get this like red fail coming up when they're doing it, and I

was like, that's a really good feature.

And for some reason they, they changed that so that doesn't show up anymore.

But I think things like that for all platforms should just be like a given,

'cause it just puts it as just a standard

standard.

Should We then disappeared down a rabbit hole about hover states and underlines.

The short version, keep it simple, and make your links look like links.

But there is one linking habit that still catches nearly everyone out,

and it's two little words: click here

if you had, like, a sentence of, like, "Click here to download our latest

article on such and such and such," I don't know, and it's a big sentence,

what used to be the common practice was the click here would be the link.

So if somebody was using a screen reader or something like that and they just

at, land on click here, they don't know where the click here is taking them to.

And I think that advice was shared, so then some people started going like,

"Oh, well, I know. I'll just, like, link, like, that entire sentence so people

know exactly where they're going to."

But like, no, we just have to reword it to, like, click here to download the such

and such article or the resource, and then they know exactly what that link is doing.

but yeah, I can see how sometimes, like, when you share a bit of

information, then people almost go to, like, the polar opposite extreme.

Well, that's an SEO thing as well because it- Google will kind of ignore

click here if it doesn't tell the person or Google where they're clicking to.

So yeah, it's click here to go to this page.

Click here to download this PDF.

But again, it's, I think it can be that thing where like a little

bit of knowledge can be a bit of a dangerous thing 'cause like you

say, it gets kind of misused anyway.

I like to think this has changed.

I'm hoping Nikki will know.

Nikki will know if this has gotten better.

Um,

Nicki Anna

but especially with like, that was such a tip coming from like the SEO experts for a

while of like cramming your alt tags with your keywords to-- and then again, like

people are just like, "Oh, okay, cool.

That helps with keywords.

That's what I'll do." And then accessibility people

are like, "No, don't do that.

That's not what it's for." Um, so

It's hard to get the balance, isn't it?

it is, it is, it is a balance.

and if you can write them in a good, like kind of strategic way that you

are getting a couple of keywords in there, then that's perfect.

Yeah.

It is, as say, it's a balance I think.

So there is that.

I would love to know what your main… what you would like people's main

accessibility takeaway is to be from here

other than like the obvious things of like texture, color, contrast,

guys, um, just want to do that.

We're really, we're going strong.

Um, I

I know.

with you on color contrast.

Facing, I would always say have a backup font.

So if you're using like a script handwriting font,

you want to have a backup

Yeah.

And if we're assuming 'cause most of your audience are other web designers,

so I would also say, like, at the end of a project when you've got, like,

your staging domain and things, putting that into, like, Lighthouse, using,

like, WAVE plugins to, like, test base.

If you know that accessibility isn't something that you're

super, like, kind of confident…

In fact, even if you are confident with accessibility, 'cause

I'll still run, like, tests on

websites before they're live or even maybe just, like, once they're launched

because with some platforms you obviously need to wait until there's a live

website for it to, for it to test it.

making accessibility tests just, like, part of your process because they will

always pick up on things that you've missed even when you're, like, appro-

there'll be something where you've, you've thrown something in and when you've been

in the middle of something and then you've gone on, you've moved on to another task

and then it's been, like, three weeks and you completely forgot about it.

And yeah, so I think making accessibility testing just part

of your process when you're, when you're launching on that, um-

And I would like to add with that as well, and this is, you know, I always

say about graphic designers and branding designers are not website designers.

And they'll often say, you know, when the market's tough, they'll often

say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, we can build your website for you as well." And

the difference is what they're usually designing in brand and stuff is static.

So say, for example, you have on a desktop version of a website, you've

got a yellow background, and then you put a decorative red circle in there.

So I'll often put something in there on the bottom right.

It will all look good.

When you move it onto a mobile, that red circle is then going to

overlap that yellow background.

The text is gonna move into it depending on your column structure, and suddenly

you've got a big accessibility issue.

And it doesn't mean that you necessarily need to change the design.

I can just turn off that red circle on mobile so that it doesn't show,

build a different container to show on mobile and not show on

the desktop and tablet versions.

But often designers leave the responsive design testing until the very end.

And like you say, test it as you go along.

So because by the time you get to the end of a website project,

you never want to see that

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're like, "I'm so done.

I'm so done with this.

Get out.

Rachel and I could have swapped stories about websites that have

wronged us all day, but that's a therapy session, not a podcast.

Before we said our goodbyes, I asked Rachel where you can find her

mostly on LinkedIn.

I do have Instagram.

I'll occasionally post on it, but mostly LinkedIn, um, @rachelmess.

The company is The Inclusive Design Company.

So it's inclusivedesigncompany.co.uk.

Uh, yeah, there and LinkedIn are kind of the two main places

that, that you'll get me.

yeah

Fantastic.

And maybe in my stocks

And maybe in your sparse script.

these for you, Nas.

Oh, well, thank you so much for joining us today.

It has been an absolute delight

Oh, so lovely talking to you.

Thank you for having me

So if you've learned something from today's episode, if you had

a takeaway that you think, "Yeah, it's that light bulb moment," I

would absolutely love to hear it.

You can reach me at [email protected].

You can find me on LinkedIn at Holly C. Christie.

You can contact me through the website, websitesmadesimple.co.uk.

There's a contact form there.

You can see… You can even drop a voice note in there.

I love to talk.

I love to hear from you as well.

So do get in touch.

And until next time, happy designing those accessible websites