Tilting the Lens
At Tilting the Lens, we believe accessibility is a continuous and evolving practice. It’s not an afterthought, but a baseline expectation and starting point. Accessibility is a fundamental aspect of design that builds dignity, equity, agency, innovation, and pride. This philosophy guided every step of our website redesign, a collaborative journey focused on creating a digital experience that is not only highly accessible, but also aesthetically compelling.
Tilting the Lens teamed up with Cova Communications for their expertise in strategic communication, and New Graphic, a firm celebrated for its innovative and user-centric design approaches. Cova Communications facilitated clear communication and project management, while New Graphic focused on implementing design principles that championed accessibility without compromising aesthetic appeal. Our final collaborators were the Disabled community in our research database, who took part in the research and co-design process to ensure accessibility was embedded from the beginning.
The urgency for accessible design is clear. The WebAIM 2025 Report revealed that 94.8% of the one million home pages tested failed WCAG 2 guidelines. This statistic reinforced our commitment to ensuring our new website would not just meet, but exceed, minimum accessibility standards.
Our project goal was clear from the outset – to pass WCAG 2.1 AA, as a minimum, and increase access through research and innovation, while also being compliant with new European Accessibility Act (EAA) regulations (Standard EN 301 549).
We are coming close to the fifth anniversary of Tilting the Lens and naturally our home on the internet needed to evolve with us. We aimed to reflect the growth and evolution of our company, services and team, as well as better access to our resources, news, and events.
Our approach is rooted in the Disability Justice model, which positions Disabled people as equal partners and experts in their own experiences and access needs. We focus on Human-centred Design and Co-Design methodologies for our projects and services, so this process was no different.
Although a majority-Disabled team ourselves, we always remind ourselves that we don’t know what we don’t know. We partnered with New Graphic for web design and development and Cova Communications for content strategy and project management. We also engaged deeply with the Disabled community, particularly individuals from our Research Database, to ensure their insights shaped the design and development from the very beginning. This commitment meant our research practices were paid, respectful, and community-led, actively avoiding extractionary methods.
Accessible design should not mean boring or uninviting. We know that accessible and beautiful designs can go hand-in-hand. It was important for us to gather qualitative feedback on the designs to get a better picture of the personal experience of users.
While the team at Tilting the Lens were writing the content, the design and development process got underway. It involved continuous iteration, learning, and improvement. We integrated testing as early as possible into both the design and development phases.
We completed multiple rounds of user testing, each providing invaluable feedback.
We utilised a number of common user testing methods to uncover both definitive design decisions and ambiguous sentiment. We used remote, unmoderated testing through Google forms. We also conducted follow-up interviews with users to expand on their answers and understand specific barriers.
We designed our testing environments and methods to be as flexible and usable as possible to allow a variety of feedback from the widest possible group.
Learning more about the co-design process and user testing
Our journey doesn’t end with the website launch. Tilting the Lens is committed to continuous review, updating, and improvement of our website’s accessibility and usability. We are currently conducting a further external independent audit, updating our internal content guidelines, and will continue working with assistive technology users to respond to feedback on the website.
This collaborative effort, blending our knowledge and experience, the expertise of New Graphic and Cova Communications, with the invaluable lived experiences of the Disabled community, has resulted in a website that truly embodies our mission: to drive system change and build a more equitable world for everyone by design.
Instead of aiming for broad accessibility or focusing on a pre-defined target, Human-Centred Design is a methodology that prioritises the needs, behaviours, and experiences of users.