How much of the design we create never actually reaches everyone it was meant for?
That question rarely surfaces in the middle of a creative process. But that’s often exactly where the problem starts.
When I first received the brief to design a deck for the Solve! Youth Launchpad program (a new program from Solve Education!), I approached it with the confidence of someone who knew the context well. I had a clear visual direction in mind and felt ready to execute.
Until our COO, who would also be the one presenting this deck directly to the participants on the day, pointed out something I had completely overlooked. The participants of this program are young people with a range of disabilities. Some have low vision, some are deaf, and some have cognitive impairments. The deck I was working on needed to be understood by all of them.
That stopped me. Not because I didn’t care, but because I had been designing with the assumption that my audience processes information the same way I do.
Back to Basics: Researching Before Moving Forward
After receiving that feedback, I decided to pause and do proper research before continuing. I didn’t just want to know what needed to change. I wanted to understand why, so that my design decisions would be grounded in something real and not just guesswork.
What I found was genuinely surprising. Many of the design principles I had considered “correct” turned out to be not so friendly for people with disabilities. A colour combination that looked contrasty and elegant to me could be nearly unreadable for someone with low vision. A content layout I thought was clear and well-structured could feel overwhelming for someone with cognitive impairments. Text that reads naturally in written form can become its own barrier for someone whose primary language is sign language.
This wasn’t about different tastes or different standards. It was about fundamentally different ways of processing visual information. And as a designer, that was my responsibility to understand.
Three Design Decisions That Changed
With that foundation in place, I went back to the deck and reworked several decisions from scratch, this time with a clearer understanding of who I was actually designing for.
1. Contrast for low vision participants
My primary focus became contrast between font colour and background. In my earlier iteration, I had chosen colour combinations that I felt were already sufficiently contrasted. But after doing the research, I realised that intuition alone wasn’t enough. There are measurable accessibility standards that need to be used as reference points, not just a gut feeling that something “looks fine.” Every colour choice went through a new question: not “does this look good?” but “is this actually readable?”
2. Content structure for participants with cognitive impairments
I rethought how I structured the content. Earlier drafts were still too dense on several slides, too much information on a single page because I was trying to hold onto every point that felt important. After researching, I started applying a stricter principle: one page, one main message. I learned that cutting isn’t the same as losing value. It is, in fact, part of the design work itself.
3. Copy clarity for deaf participants
When it came to the copy, I made a deliberate choice: to not intervene. The program team who prepared the slide text had worked directly alongside this community for a long time, and that closeness showed in how they wrote, concise, clear, and easy to process. Recognising when to trust someone else’s expertise is its own design skill. And this project reminded me that inclusive design isn’t something one person carries alone.
The Three Needs Didn’t Conflict — They Aligned
One of my concerns before reworking the deck was whether meeting all of these needs would make the design feel “reduced” somehow. Would inclusive design mean compromising on visual quality?
It didn’t. Strong contrast, clear structure, concise copy, all of it pointed toward the same thing: design that actually communicates. And I started to realise that this principle should have been present in every project I’ve worked on, not only those involving audiences with disabilities.
Inclusive Design Is Design That Works
At the end of the process, our team could say with confidence:
“This deck is designed to be deaf and low vision friendly.”
For me, that sentence wasn’t just a technical footnote. It was a different kind of success metric. Not how good the design looked, but how well it reached the people it was made for.
And this matters well beyond a single deck or a single program. As both a social enterprise and a registered nonprofit, Solve Education! believes that access to quality learning should not be limited by someone’s background, condition, or ability. Design is one of the entry points to that access. If the design isn’t inclusive, the message won’t land, and opportunities that should be open will remain closed to some people.
The question I used to bring into every project was: does this design look good? Now my first question is: who is going to see this, and is this design truly made for them?
Design rules are a good starting point. But truly understanding your audience, not assuming but actually understanding, is what makes design work. In the context of an organisation that serves communities who are often left behind, that’s not just a creative choice. It’s a responsibility.
— Dheni Leo, Graphic Designer at Solve Education!