Who Counts as ‘Human’ in Human-Centered Design?

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I’ve always thought of myself as an inclusive designer, but during Asurion’s A11y Maven Cohort 2 training, I started to realize there’s still more I need to learn and more I could be doing. While attending Axe-Con virtually this year, two talks stood out to me. One approached accessibility from a philosophical angle, and the other from a practical viewpoint. Together, they reframed how I’m thinking about inclusion and raised a question I keep coming back to:

Who do we actually mean when we say “human” in human-centered design?

This question, along with A11y accessibility training, pushed me to reflect on my own background and on the many winding paths that lead people into product design.

What we don’t talk about when we talk about the path to product design

One of the things I love most about product design is how many different paths lead here. Some designers started in art school, studying graphic design before realizing they wanted to solve more than visual problems. Others studied engineering, only to discover they missed seeing the human impact of their work. Still others came from psychology, journalism, or marketing—fields rooted in curiosity about how people think, feel, and make decisions.

I’m sure you get the point, but indulge me a bit: some of the most seasoned designers started back when the web was a playground for hobbyists and niche interests. They’ve grown with the field and now lead teams of recent grads who went through UX-specific programs.

Despite these wildly different starting points, one thing is consistent:

Everyone in this field is drawn to understanding human problems—and driven to solve them.

Ironically, though design is increasingly made up of people from diverse academic and professional backgrounds, one area remains consistently overlooked: digital accessibility. And I have a theory why.

If you do a quick search of the most common fields people leave to become designers, I think you’ll see the pattern.
For transparency, I asked ChatGPT for this list and to cite sources which I’ve linked at the bottom. However, anecdotally, this aligns with many of the backgrounds of designers I’ve come across during my time in the field.

Common Fields People Transition From Into UX or Product Design

  • Graphic Design / Visual Communication
  • Psychology / Cognitive Science
  • English / Journalism / Writing
  • Marketing / Business / Communications
  • Computer Science / Engineering
  • Anthropology / Sociology
  • Architecture / Industrial Design
  • Health Sciences / Education
  • Law / Political Science / Philosophy

Now ask yourself: which of these regularly teach digital accessibility?

Despite the variety of backgrounds that feed into product design, most of them don’t explicitly teach accessibility, let alone push us to question who we’re centering or leaving out. We may enter the field through different doors, but we often inherit the same blind spots.

Personally, if I reflect on my own studies in the late 2000s-early 2010s, I can’t recall a single marketing or PR class where we discussed making a press release or social media post accessible. Sure, that was a different time, but in 2025? There really shouldn’t be any excuse.

We might not have flying cars, but we do have the tools to make accessibility something more than a checklist—or worse, an afterthought. It should be part of how we design, build, and test from the start. This is where Maya Sellon’s talk at Axe-Con really hit home for me.

Considering the ‘Human’ in Human-Centered Design”

In her talk, titled “Considering the ‘Human’ in Human-Centered Design” Sellon questioned the designation of “human” in human-centered design. She goes on to explain how mainstream definitions of HCD frame it as a “problem-solving method,” but rarely specify which humans are centered. And here is the problem that many other designers and I face without being aware of it. While we may be considering our users, we rarely consider which users we’re leaving out.

“Harvard Business School says HCD is a problem solving technique that puts real people at the center of the development process. I wonder who these real people are…. It wasn’t until I checked the Interaction Design Foundation, co-founded by Don Norman, the father of UX, that I came across a definition that started to resonate with me. Human centered design is a practice where designers focus on people and their context…..Norman was helping designers understand their responsibility to the people they were designing for….The problem was that the designers kept overlooking the human limitations of the people who had to use their designs. As the article put it, the trouble with users is they’re only human.”

Through stories, Sellon reminds us: accessibility isn’t just regulation. It’s about people. Stories like watching her Japanese mother struggle with pronunciation in a U.S. drive-thru only to be met with muffled laughter or her own struggles with a foreign language when she moved to the Netherlands — illustrating how designing for one user without considering who you’re leaving out can create real exclusion, not just theoretical.

And that’s the point. With technology increasingly shaping our lives—from AI assistants to healthcare portals—designers need to rethink who they’re building for and who they might be leaving out.

“Accessibility is not a checklist—it’s about people.” — Maya Sellon

Practical Strategies for Accessible Design

That human-centered framing sets the stage for the next talk I want to touch on, where Eric Zirlinger shifts from intention to implementation. While Sellon challenged us to reconsider who we center, Zirlinger showed us how to make accessibility more actionable in day-to-day design work.

In his talk, “Practical Strategies for Accessible Design,” Zirlinger offered tangible methods for addressing common accessibility issues—specifically around color contrast, reliance on color to convey meaning, reading order, and link text. These are areas where designers have direct influence, and his talk made them feel much more approachable, which is probably why I found his talk so impactful.

“Accessibility is complicated. If it weren’t, all designs would already be accessible.”– Eric Zirlinger

Making accessibility actionable

Rather than asking designers to memorize WCAG contrast ratios and rules, Zirlinger offered a simpler decision-making lens:

Is this element needed, helpful, or not needed to complete the user’s goal?

  • Needed → contrast ratio of 4.5:1
  • Helpful → 3:1
  • Not needed → no requirement
  • Example: Text label on a button = needed → must meet 4.5:1
  • Decorative icons = not needed → no contrast requirement

This avoids the overwhelming WCAG decision tree and focuses instead on intent and clarity.

He also shared a quick way to test whether you’re relying too heavily on color to communicate meaning:

Use the “luminosity blend mode” in Figma.

Then, ask someone to identify all the interactive elements. If they struggle, your users will too.

GIF of Pie graph in desaturated and then shown in color in Figma UI
Demonstration of using luminosity blend in figma

Screenshot of 3 duplicate UI screens displaying the differences of color with and without luminosity blend and with added underline for links
Example of 3 duplicate UI screens displaying the differences of color with and without the luminosity blend layer applied and with an added underline for accessibility links

Beyond colors and visuals, he emphasized a frequently overlooked issue: screen readers follow reading order—not layout. To ensure that assistive technologies interpret your designs correctly:

  • Start by defining the user’s goal.
  • Annotate your design components in the intended reading sequence.
  • Document variations at different breakpoints (desktop, tablet, mobile).

Slide titled 'Applying the practical approach to reading order' showing two visual approaches to documenting reading order: Approach 1 uses red arrows to indicate flow from image to headline to body text; Approach 2 uses numbered red circles (1, 2, 3) to indicate the same reading sequence.

  • Use link text that makes sense out of context—for example, “Learn about accessibility” instead of “Learn more.”

Slide titled 'The “learn more” problem' showing a web section labeled 'Recent articles' with three cards. Each card has an image, article title, summary text, and a 'Learn more' link. The slide highlights the accessibility issue of non-descriptive link text, which provides no context when read by a screen reader. A 'View all' link is also shown.How designers think everyone will see ‘Learn More’ CTAs VS

Slide titled 'An example of the VoiceOver rotor on a Mac' showing a dark gray overlay with a list of four links labeled: 'Learn more,' 'Learn more,' 'Learn more,' and 'View all.' The slide demonstrates how assistive technology users encounter ambiguous link text that provides no context about where each 'Learn more' link leads.How assistive technology users actually see/hear ‘Learn More’ CTAs

His ultimate test:

If someone could only hear your interface, would they still understand it?

Where these talks intersect

Both Sellon and Zirlinger, in my opinion, land on the same truth:

Accessibility isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about designing with people in mind—especially those often overlooked.

  • Maya Sellon challenges us to question our assumptions about who we’re designing for.
  • Eric Zirlinger shows designers how to build in accessibility without getting overwhelmed.

When those perspectives are combined, the work becomes not just compliant but truly human-centered.

The takeaway

So, after all that, what do I want you to walk away with?

  • A reminder to double-check who you’re centering—and who you might be unintentionally excluding.
  • A few practical ways to build accessibility into your workflow, like:
    • Using luminosity blend mode to test if interactive elements are still clear without color.
    • Asking whether an element is needed, helpful, or unnecessary for the user’s goal to guide color contrast decisions.
    • Defining and annotating reading order based on task flow, not just layout—especially across breakpoints.
    • Writing link text that makes sense out of context, so users know where it leads even if they only hear it.

  • And lastly, a question that emerged as I wrote this post—one I don’t have a clear answer to yet: What role does accessibility play in AI-centered design?

    As human–AI interaction and delegation become more common, how do we ensure those systems are designed to include everyone? What does accessibility look like when the “interface” is no longer a screen, but a conversation?

Again, I don’t have an answer, but I think it’s a question worth asking.

Bonus

Pick one idea from each of their talks:

  • Maya’s talk: Who are you centering?
  • Eric’s talk: What practical fix could improve the next thing you design?

Let it shape your process this week. Because accessibility isn’t just one person’s job, it’s everyones.

Sources:

The below were pulled and synthesis via ChatGPT

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