Inclusive Design Guide

Designing inclusive and accessible experiences may seem daunting. However, proper application of these practices can make your UX faster, more familiar, and available to the widest possible audience. It's also, quite simply, the right thing to do.

This guide includes a lightly modified version of the excellent Inclusive Web Design Checklist by Heydon Pickering. It also has observations and notes from the Design Systems team.

Note: This is not a comprehensive list. Product design and UX engineering are complex functions that can't be solved with a checklist. Instead, consider this as a way to spot areas of opportunity for your product.

We recommend using this guide in the following ways:

• Read through the guide once. We recommend starting with sections that relate to your role. However, reading the entire list will give you a richer understanding of inclusive design and accessibility.
• Share this guide with your design, product, and engineering peers. Engage with them in a conversation about how we could carve some space in our day-to-day work to make our Twilio experiences a little more inclusive.
• Revisit the guide at natural checkpoints of your product's design and development: we recommend doing so at the start of a project, before a UX review, and as a pre-launch checklist.
• Finally, keep us accountable: Track our progress on our GitHub Discussions thread as we apply these principles across this website.

Baseline tips that are useful for all builders of web based experiences.

The tips below are important considerations for the product design process. However, they are useful for engineers as well and must be considered at all stages of product development.

While the tips below are geared towards developers, it is recommended that designers understand these concepts and have conversations about inclusive design with their engineering partners.