The word 'accessibility' is often used and often misunderstood. But in visual communication, its meaning is clear: if you want to reach the widest possible audience, your content must be designed with empathy, intention and a deep understanding of how differently people take in information.
At Scriberia, we know that the most powerful ideas are the ones everyone can access and engage with. And we’re always asking ourselves: how can we make the things we create more accessible, more intuitive and more effective?
That’s why we are so pleased to welcome Alice Kell to the visualiser team. Alice is driven to make visual content that more people can connect with and understand. Her own experience of dyslexia, combined with her extensive work alongside neurodiverse communities, gives her a deep insight into accessible design. Alice is dedicated to the art and science of designing with accessibility and inclusion in mind. Here's an animation she made on the experience and often overlooked benefits of being dyslexic.
What is accessible visual communication?
As Microsoft's CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, once said: “Accessible design is good design - it benefits people who don’t have disabilities as well as people who do.”
At its core, accessible design means recognising that our ability to access and process information varies greatly from person to person - like any other trait or ability. Whether someone has dyslexia, ADHD, low vision or sensory processing differences, the design choices you make will either include them or shut them out.
“To put it into perspective, people with disabilities or neurodivergent minds make up the world’s largest minority - around one billion people globally. That’s a huge audience too often excluded by default design practices”, says Alice.
“But a lot of visual communication still seems to assume a pretty narrow audience - people who are neurotypical, non-disabled and totally fluent in the usual design conventions. That’s exactly what we want to challenge.
"And here’s the added bonus: when you design to include more people, you usually make things better for everyone. Clarity, consistency, and thoughtful structure don’t just help those with specific needs - they help all of us take in information more easily."
Here is an animation that Alice created to explain how dyslexia
A creative challenge
One common myth is that designing accessibly means compromising on creativity. But at Scriberia, we’ve found the opposite to be true.
“When you treat accessibility as a creative challenge rather than a challenge to creativity it pushes you to think harder, experiment better and land stronger ideas,” says Alice.
“Working within clear parameters - like legibility, clarity and inclusion - sharpens your focus and strengthens your storytelling.”
Accessible design isn’t about stripping things back to the bare bones. It’s about making smart, purposeful choices. And when you do, your message gets clearer, your audience gets wider and your content becomes better for everyone.
Alice’s top tips for making visual communication accessible:
- Simplify structure: Keep layouts intuitive. Use clear visual hierarchy to guide the eye - avoid clutter that overwhelms or confuses.
- Prioritise readability: Use clear, consistent typography with strong contrast and generous spacing. Fonts designed with dyslexia in mind - Comic Sans among them! - can improve legibility by maintaining consistent spacing between letters and lines. Some have even been scientifically tested to support a range of neurodiverse processing needs.
- Use colour responsibly: Avoid relying on colour alone to convey meaning - pair it with labels, shapes or patterns. Stick to accessible colour combinations (e.g. avoid red/green-only contrasts). High contrast is helpful but watch out for extremes like white text on black, which can cause eye fatigue.
- Include alternative text and captions: Add alt text to describe key visuals for screen readers. Include captions and subtitles for video content - covering dialogue, sound effects and relevant audio cues. Make sure captions don’t obscure important on-screen content.
- Use plain language: Accessibility applies to words too. Avoid jargon or overly complex phrasing.
- Provide audio descriptions: For blind or low-vision users, a narrated track describing key visual elements - like actions, diagrams or on-screen text - can be invaluable.
- Design with - not just for - your audience: Include people with lived experience from the start. “There’s no way a team of people without neurodiversity can fully imagine how someone else sees the world. That’s why testing, feedback, and co-design are so important. You catch things that you’d never spot otherwise. There are great tools out there to help you check contrast ratios, font legibility, and reading order. But no tool replaces real feedback from real users.”