Design For All feat. Yahye Siyad

We speak with Yahye Siyad, founder of Inclusive Horizons, who has dedicated his career to improving digital accessibility.

Blind since birth, Yahye works with organisations like the Bank of England and TfL, helping them design more inclusive digital services.

Here he shares key insights on common accessibility challenges, simple but impactful improvements, and why true inclusion benefits everyone.

Can you please introduce yourself, what you do, and tell us about your experience with accessible design?

My name is Yahye. I work to improve digital accessibility and inclusion through my consultancy, Inclusive Horizons. I’ve been blind since birth, so am passionate about making digital services better for people who might otherwise be excluded. What this means is I help organisations with testing, creating reports, delivering training for designers, developers, and QA, and providing guidance and thought leadership. Through my freelance work and in my last role with CACI (formerly Cyber-Duck), I’ve worked with organisations such as the European Central Bank, Bank of England, and TfL and advised them on how to improve their practices to benefit as many people as possible.  

What does digital inclusion mean to you?

Digital inclusion means the ability to fully participate in every aspect of society. In a digital era, without digital inclusion, so much of life becomes unavailable to you that you effectively feel locked up. So really, it’s about my ability as an individual to engage and participate in a society that is becoming more and more digital. 

How are you promoting digital inclusion and inclusive design through your work, and what are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

I promote digital inclusion by engaging with a wide range of organisations – from the education sector, to transport, to banking and beyond. I feel that by working as a consultant, I can make a broader impact than I could working as an employee of a single organisation, which is why I established Inclusive Horizons five years ago.  

The main message I try to convey through my work is that while of course digital accessibility helps people with disabilities, it’s also almost always best practice for improving everyone’s usability. Contrary to most people’s assumptions, most accessibility issues aren’t just disadvantaging a small percentage of society but are impacting the way everyone experiences a product or website. Investing in inclusive design is investing in including everyone at every stage in their lives, not just a small subsection of society. 

One of the main challenges I face is a lack of understanding about what digital accessibility means, and a lack of dedicated resources within organisations to implement it consistently. Most organisations don’t have an individual or department able to pull the strings and advocate internally, so even if there is a willingness to act and implement a strategy, there isn’t anyone who’s role is dedicated to accessibility who can put that into place. I’ve seen this even in huge organisations: there’s no single department that accessibility comes under. It’s kind of homeless and it’s uncertain who’s meant to implement those strategies – is it the UX team? Is it HR? Marketing? Development? So, the main challenges for me are a lack of understanding and direction, and a lack of resources to implement what is understood. 

In your experience, what are some of the most common blockers to digital accessibility?

The main blockers are the underestimation of what accessibility is. What I mean by that is that organisations think “OK, we’ve got some understanding, we think it’s important, we’ve got the basics in place”, and take that to mean they’ve ‘solved’ accessibility. As a result, they see further improvements as an extra task to add to someone’s workload, something to outsource, or something to automate. It’s not seen as critical as something like security. I think a big part of the reason for this is a lack of legislation in the private sector to enforce accessibility, unlike in the public sector. 

What are some minor accessibility improvements that you’ve encountered or that apps and websites have put into place that make a really big difference?

There are definitely a few improvements and tools that make my life a whole lot easier.  

Thoughtful additions like “skip to content” buttons, high contrast options, and embedded options on websites to listen to an article rather than reading it with my screen reader can all be really handy.  

Apart from these, basic accessibility considerations make navigating websites with a screen reader so much easier:  

• A skip to content button is really useful to have at the top of a page to save me scrolling endlessly with my screen reader trying to find where I’m meant to get to. 

• Clear differentiation of labels, links, and buttons on a website makes navigation so much easier, as I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts to isolate and move between these to get to the content I need easier. For instance, I’ll click Insert key plus F7 which will move me through all the links that take me off the page, helping me to find the information I’m looking for quicker. 

• Forms are always an accessibility challenge, but inputting dates is normally the most challenging aspect, especially if its done through a calendar pop-up. Having separate combo boxes for date, month, and year makes life so much easier. 

What are some of the resources and tools you use to make your experience of navigating the web and the digital landscape easier?

Tools I use a lot for websites that are really lacking in accessibility – where the buttons don’t work, the links don’t work or aren’t labelled correctly, the forms aren’t fillable using a screen reader – are The Microsoft Help Desk and “Be My Eyes” service. Through these, volunteers can help me navigate pages that it would be really difficult to get through otherwise. 

I’ve been using a lot of voice-based AI tools to help me find information, rather than typing and using websites that might be inaccessible. Chat GPT and Co-Pilot save me having to root through difficult to navigate pages and articles, filtering through information to get to what I need. Google Assistant is great for finding nearby restaurants and businesses to access their contact information without trying to get around their websites. 

Another useful feature is the ability to use the camera lens on these AI tools to describe my surroundings. It’s almost like having a conversation with a person who can see what I see and provide detailed descriptions. That feels extraordinary and has been really useful for me.  

However, while these tools are great for these use-cases, there are still things AI can’t help with, like the persistent challenge of form-filling on websites. 

Accessible Design Resources
Following the insightful recommendations from our Design For All participants, we’ve curated an extensive collection of tools, guides, articles, books, blogs, and videos. This resource is specifically designed to support accessibility and inclusion specialists at every stage of their journey.

View Accessible Design Resources