Accessibility vs Design trends

Neumorphism? Glassmorphism? Material Design? All design trends can be accessible.

Remember how in late 2019 I wrote that first-ever Neumorphism article? The entire debate that started with over half a million readers divided the design community in half.

One half liked this idea of the New Skeuomorphism, as people are slowly getting bored with the current design trends. They wanted to explore it and see how it can be used (if at all).

But the louder, more aggressive group was the Accessibility advocates. Their concern? Neumorphism is NOT accessible. They wrote countless blog posts on just that one part, even when I clearly stated the biggest accessibility problem of that trend in the very first article. The same thing started happening with Glassmorphism as well.

The contrast issue

Low contrast is the main problem that’s being raised with all of these design styles.

But the thing is that low contrast is not inherently connected to a design style.

It’s a choice.

Any design style can be NON-Accessible.

Even Material and Flat Design.

It’s up to the designers to make the style accessible, and the most essential part of accessibility is making sure the actionable UI elements are clear, understandable and fully visible — to everyone.

With proper layout and hierarchy, a Neumorphic card is fully usable even to people who can’t discern its outline. And that’s the entire point — some of these styles work best when they’re used as decoration, while keeping the rest of the UI elements clear and accessible.

It’s that simple!

If you have accessible buttons, text-fields, forms, titles and paragraphs, and you use proper spacing for hierarchy and readability you end up with an accessible interface. If some people cannot see the decoration, it won’t affect their ability to use the product.