A Mini Guide to — Designing with Accessibility (in Cybersecurity)

As a UX designer at a cybersecurity firm, I’ve dedicated significant time to exploring digital accessibility, focusing specifically on how it impacts both cyber analysts and end users of security tools. This research has given me valuable insights into creating more inclusive cybersecurity systems.

Rather than present another standard guide on accessibility guidelines, I want to share my direct experiences and discoveries. Through detailed user journeys and specific examples, I’ll demonstrate how thoughtful accessibility considerations can enhance cybersecurity tools for everyone.

This exploration reveals the transformative potential of accessible digital systems in improving work efficiency and quality of life, particularly in the specialized field of cybersecurity.

This is going to be my Journal as I progressed to understand the profound importance of accessible digital systems and how they can improve the quality of life.

Introduction

My journey with accessibility began during a mentorship session early in my design career. The concept resonated with me deeply for several reasons.

When I joined my firm, I made accessibility part of my first-quarter goals. Inspired by my seniors’ work in this field, I gained two crucial insights:

1. Accessibility is a practice for all designers — regardless of their level, product, or target demographics. everyone could benefit from accessible designs, not just people with special abilities.
2. You don’t need special credentials or years of experience to create accessible systems. All it takes is empathy and awareness of key principles to design inclusively for all users.

Let’s dive into it. Shall we?

What is Accessibility?

Let’s clear up a common mix-up about accessibility!

Do you know how people often think accessibility just means making sure your website or app works on different devices? Or that it’s all about being able to access info anywhere and everywhere?

Sure, that stuff matters — but there’s way more to it! Accessibility is really about making sure everyone, and I mean everyone, can actually use — (everyone means people who are specially abled, as well as people stuck in a situational disability) and enjoy what we create. I will explain that in the sections to come.

So what exactly is Accessibility?

The Internet says, "Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments that are usable by people with disabilities."

You have likely noticed signs such as those on toilets, tactile signs on elevator buttons, the use of subtitles in videos, or dark mode settings available in nearly all applications.

Very simply put, it is to product design in such a way that your designs can be used by anyone, deaf, blind, mobility constraints, people with cognitive issues, people with this issue, that issue…

Sounds heavy? This sounds like we need medical knowledge! Well, not really.

All we need is some common knowledge of how various users' realities differ from ours, what influences their choices and decisions, and how they conduct their lives in general.

Kinds of Disabilities

Now, let's dive into theory for a little bit.

What are the common disability types?

1. Vision — ie, Blind users, partial as well as complete blindness. Includes color blindness of various levels, inability to distinguish a few colors to complete color blindness where the world is black and white.
2. Hearing — partial to complete hearing loss.
3. Mobility and dexterity — a certain body part does not respond. It could be fingers even. (btw, I even came across EXAMPLES of people using their elbows or feet to touch Mobile interfaces!)
4. Cognitive Disability — This one has to be at the top of the game, It's the most complex to understand. Dyslexia, Short attention span. Cognition levels vary from individual to individual, making them one of the most needed problems to be addressed.
5. Mental Health — this is often overlooked and misrepresented. The Global Health Data Exchange estimates that 251–310 million people worldwide suffer from depression post-COVID.

Everyone today uses digital tech. An estimated 3.8 billion people use smartphones. So, the government has put laws in place to regulate good digital practices that are inclusive, especially for people with disabilities.

Rehabilitation Act of 1973 — The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was a landmark law that protected millions with disabilities from discrimination by federal agencies and contractors in employment, financial aid, and technology.

ADA — American Disability Act- The 1990 ADA law protects people with disabilities from discrimination in employment, public services, accommodations, and communications.

The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was amended to include digital content UNDER SECTION 508. The Section 508 amendment means that both the Federal government and organizations that want to do business with the federal government need to have accessible digital assets.

Currently, we are operating under Web Accessibility version 2.1 updated in 2018.

Assisstive Technologies

Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities. These come under the WCAG guidelines.

In the context of digital tech, the commonly used ones are -

Keyboard, screen magnifiers, dictation tools, Screen readers, Spell checkers, and Voice Recognition tools.

Most common kinds.

The ATs are increasing and enhancing with time age and technology. As product owners, we must acknowledge and design the product complementing the assistive techs so that we can accommodate the people using these technologies.

Why accessibility is a powerful tool for Product Designers?

as per WHO, Currently Around 15 percent of the world’s population, over an estimated 1 billion people, live with disabilities.,

An estimated 386 million of the world’s working-age people have some kind of disability, says the International Labour Organization (ILO). Unemployment among persons with disabilities is as high as 80 percent in some countries. Often employers assume that persons with disabilities are unable to work.

These are numbers, important numbers, but what sold me was the fact that everyone today uses digital tech. More so to make their life easier. More than, us building a product that caters to specially abled people, it is them who use our products, and digital systems to assist their lives.

Imagine, Lisa.

Accessible systems can bridge the barrier between users' physical limitations and what they want to achieve.

Imagine the impact we can make in elevating the lives of disabled users just by some conscious design choices.

In terms of business, when such a large demographic is left out, it means we are keeping an entire entire market segment completely untapped.

Now imagine Rob,

.. and this is precisely where it gets more interesting. It's not restricted to just users with physical limitations. There can be situation limitations to any user and they are simply stranded or immobile to certain usage.

Disability hence is not limited to a handful of users, all of us can be disabled temporarily or even put in a situation with our surroundings.

States of Disability

So, disability has various states too. Redefining the disability types with States.

When we talk about someone being unable to differentiate between colors, it’s not just about a disorder. It could also mean they overlooked something while operating their phone and driving a car simultaneously. In our case, it could be opening a notification from an alert system.

Why Accessibility in Cybersecurity?

You might wonder how someone with a disability could work as a Cyber Analyst, given the role’s critical nature. I once shared this misconception, thinking cybersecurity might be too complex for professionals with disabilities. The statistics, however, tell a different story.

In 2018, the US Department of Commerce estimated there were 350K unfilled cybersecurity jobs in US and Cybersecurity Ventures and, an analytics and research company, projected the global cybersecurity talent gap would reach 3.5 million by this year.

Research by Debra Ruh, CEO of Ruh Global IMPACT, shows that people with neurological conditions like autism, dyspraxia, and dyslexia excel at pattern recognition, memory, and mathematics, bringing unique problem-solving perspectives.

People with disabilities often face more challenges in keeping their jobs — they are twice as likely to become unemployed or need training for new skills. This is just the beginning of their difficulties.

Working in cybersecurity brings its own set of challenges. Security teams work under high pressure to protect their company’s important information. Leaders like Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and security team managers often feel worried and stressed. They’re concerned about: • Million-dollar data breach risks • Company-wide security threats • Emerging malware attacks.

Let’s take few Personas to understand better..

To test the system, I have selected three personas with varying disabilities. I would like to thank my teammate, who works closely with the threat response workstreams, for helping me create a workflow based on his routine interactions with interface users.

Finn — Junior Analyst — Dyslexic by birth

Finn has a permanent disability but his passion for work surpasses the limitation. As a part of his job every day,

• He focuses on closing threats as soon as possible.
• He has cases assigned to him
• Finn is a junior analyst.

Let’s see how Finn sees a screen of a complex SIEM interface.

How a screen looks to a Dylexic person.

So, it's NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE to read this… this is not meant to provide an entire solution, but the idea is to stir an understanding and empathy for users like Finn. Get a hang of their reality and start a conversation in the teams.

So, things to keep in mind for Product teams.

1. Line spacing — increased space between words and syllables.
2. design for assistive technologies — spell correctors and speech-to-text tools. Provide such inputs across the team.
3. More than one identifier for icons to represent texts.

Robert — Senior Analyst — Temporary vision impaired

Robert has a temporary disability to blurry vision as a part of his operation. So he is most likely to use Magnifiers.

Magnified screen.

Moving through various parts of the screen with Magnifier.

He has probably had a difficult time figuring out the context of every part of the screen.

So, things to keep in mind for Product teams.

1. Use screen readers instead of magnifiers — they’re better at explaining what’s on the screen
2. Make everything work with keyboard shortcuts — many users find this easier than using a mouse
3. Arrange content in a straight line — this makes it easier for screen readers and keyboard navigation
4. Show all important information when users hover over items or interact with them

Anita — Manager — Single Mom

Anita has a newborn and always requires attention. She is managing teams, so her’s is a situational disability.

It’s challenging to show exactly how a new mom would use an interface.

Since Anita needs to hold her baby often, she has limited use of her hands. She also can’t focus on tasks for long periods.

When using a screen reader, content is read in the order it appears on the page. For example, if a page has two columns of text, the screen reader will read whatever column comes first in the page’s structure.

We could test different ways to arrange content on the page. To find the best layout for users like Anita, we should do more research with parents who have similar needs.

Screen reader/Keyboard focus generally reads content in the order in which its placed on the page in the source order. So if there are two columns of text on a page, whichever one appears in the source order first will be what she hears first, if she’s reading the page from top to bottom.

Some possible SOURCE CODE ORIENTATIONS.

Linear content flow may be useful for Robert as well, who is using Magnifier.

So, things to keep in mind for Product teams.

1. Make sure designs work well on all screen sizes and devices

2. Remember that keyboard shortcuts are essential for users who have trouble using a mouse

3. Arrange content in a clear, top-to-bottom order to make keyboard navigation easier

4. Design for different ways of interacting with screens — not everyone uses their hands

5. Make interactive elements (like buttons, tabs, and links) large enough to be easily clicked or tapped

Accessibility is an Opportunity 💡

Accessibility is both a responsibility and for us designers accessibility is an opportunity!

Because at its core, it's about creating better experiences for everyone.

Even though usability is considered to be different than accessibility, I see accessible designs being the next step of usable designs, for every one of us, even not differently abled, can benefit from accessible designs.

Practicing Inclusivity across the organization.

Now that we have looked into a few used cases, let’s talk about a few basic things we can start looking into while addressing inclusive design. Let’s remember it's more than just ticking off a checklist, but to be conscious of the world of disabled people and how they could see and interact with the system.

🔎 Product Researchers

• use reverse psychology to imagine the world where your assumptions would be wrong. — probably the most powerful and profound way to understand disability.
• Converse with people with temporary and permanent disabilities.
• Metrics, personas, representations.
• Accessibility tests should be a mandate
• Voice Inclusivity.

🎨 Designers

• Designing for assistive technologies.
• Content in a structured way
• Aligment impacts readibility
• Choosing fonts judiciously.
• Put color to work.

🔩 Engineers

• Apply standard HTML semantics
• enable Keyboard accessibity
• Label and format forms
• Recognizing signifiers
• Gestures should not overlap with assisstive technologies.

📈 Management and Organisation

• invest time and efforts in inclusivity.
• Promote UX maturity.
• Set accessiblity guidelines — MAP
• Converse with clients.
• Include diversity in the workforce.

This attempt to achieve accessibility is not a straightforward job. This is primarily because the world of specially abled people is very different than ours. It can only be sufficiently addressed by repeated trials and errors and most importantly including disabled users in all the research and studies.

Create a checklist for every time you design something new...

And more often than not, I am lost in the complexity of the design to address all the intricacies of an accessible design. Here is a basic list I like to follow to ensure a some of the most common concerns are addressed.

1️⃣ quick check of Color contrast — be it button text, Headers, or subtitles. As per AA (industry standard) mentioned in WCAG 2.0, we must follow a color contrast ratio of 4.5:1 between the foreground (text) and the background. There are multiple plugins available on Figma that check the contrast ratio in seconds.

2️⃣ Keep the elements/components that are differentiated based on color, differentiated on multiple other factors like form, icon, etc. This is particularly helpful for color-blind and dyslexic people.

3️⃣ Keyboard navigation helps everyone. So planning the keyboard navigation for the entire layout. If possible to understand the source code orientation and likewise provide the information to developers while handing off the design.

4️⃣ We encourage engineers to apply standard HTML semantics since they determine how screen readers interpret content for users. As designers, we need to ensure the semantic structure in the code aligns with our visual design. For example, when designing different button types (text, primary, outline), we should consider that text buttons indicate subtle interactions with screen reader users based on their semantic meaning.

5️⃣ Advocate and test with disabled people as much as possible.

Usabilla states in their article ‘Accessibility in UX Decisions’ ,

“A developer can make accessibility work, but it’s the Product Designer that must first think about it. That is, if you want to do development on a design that’s not accessible, it simply won’t be accessible.”

In conclusion...

It’s fascinating how the world of disabled and differently abled users differs from ours. As product builders and members of the inclusive design community, we must not take disabled users for granted.

The World Health Organization notes that disability is part of being human. Almost everyone will experience disability, whether temporary or permanent, at some point in their life. Therefore, addressing the needs of people with disabilities isn’t just optional — it’s essential. I hope we can gradually build this mindset into our work.

Lastly, I am on a quest to understand and mediate inclusive design. So feedbacks and suggestions for me to improve would be very helpful.