Why I design this way

I have low vision. I have colour vision deficiency, so colours that carry meaning for most people — the red that warns, the green that reassures — often look the same to me. And I have ADHD, which means my attention is not a queue that holds; it is a spotlight that moves.

I mention these because together they are a design brief.

Most interfaces are built by people who see well, distinguish colour easily, and can hold seven things in mind while a page loads. I cannot count on any of that, so anything I build has to work without it. Text large enough to read without leaning in. Contrast that holds at every size. Meaning carried by words and numbers, never by colour alone. One clear priority per screen, because I know exactly what happens to a person’s attention when there are nine.

The result is not a special version for people like me. It is a better version for everyone. High contrast is easier on every eye at the end of a long day. Labels beat colour codes for anyone in a hurry, on a cheap screen, or in bright sunlight. A page with one priority is faster for every reader. Curb cuts were made for wheelchairs; everyone with a stroller, a suitcase or a bicycle uses them.

I spent years leading accessible-technology programs at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. What stayed with me was not a list of compliance rules. It was the habit of asking, for every design decision: who does this quietly exclude? Most exclusion is not malice. It is defaults chosen by people who never had to notice them.

So the constraints I live with are the first test my work has to pass. If I can read it, most people can read it. If I can follow it while my attention pulls elsewhere, most people can follow it tired, distracted, or interrupted. If it still makes sense with the colour stripped out, it will make sense on every screen and to every eye.

That is why this site looks the way it does, and why the commercial work at Delaren.com is built the same way. Accessibility is not a feature I add at the end. It is how I check that the work is honest.