Are designers harming users?
I feel SCAMMED as a professional designer
In a recent podcast with Dan Hollick, he told me a little-known secret many designers don’t know… and I feel betrayed.
He brought up the standards for color accessibility that WCAG supports, which in all fairness is better than no standards at all.
However, there’s a potentially ground-breaking change to the standard that helps designers and users in so many ways…
But it’s not being adopted.
Psst, if you haven’t watched or listened to it yet, check out some of the reviews:
Again, I highly recommend you watch or listen to the full episode 👇
Anyways, the standard that’s in progress of being adopted with tons of pushback is called APCA, which stands for Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm.
Dan wrote a detailed thread about it here.
It basically makes color accessibility easier to understand for designers and improves contrast ratios for users to be more accurate. It takes into account human perception as opposed to strictly “mathematical” ratios (Hollick, 2021). According to Dan, since it accepts how humans perceive dark and light colors differently, changing the standards a bit, but for the better.
The committee that decides if this new standard is adopted…. seems to not jump to its feet in celebration.
And that’s the problem.
It turns out, that although a much better standard has been produced, those whose duty it is to ensure a global standard exists actually stagnate positive change in our communities.
My realization after hearing this is: always find the source of where “standards” derive from.
You should always want to do what’s best for users and letting an unelected committee decide how you do your job makes that so much harder.
Our design community usually takes a virtue-signaling approach to shout down others and uplift false universal truths.
“It’s illegal to use that color!” they shout. “You aren’t considering people with two left feet and a permanent red nose! Shame!“ they proclaim.
This approach begins to erode our integrity, forcing a singular (inadequate) viewpoint, and has quite the opposite effect of what many preach of being inclusive.
If we’re battling with each other about designer lists’ skin colors and not focusing on our users’ needs—celebrating the amazing ideas we bring to reality together—we will overlook the most important issues. Nobody will be improving the standards that many blindly follow.
I am not here to blindly follow orders.
I’m here to design exquisite experiences that help people achieve their goals.
And you are too.
Until next time,
— Mitchell
P.S Go the extra mile, learn the APCA guidelines, and use it at your whim!