I've been at Meta for six years and joined as the first designer working exclusively on accessibility. The accessibility field had been an engineering and technically-driven space, which I found fascinating. I remember thinking, “Where are the designers?”

I gained a lot of knowledge from the first blind engineer at Meta, who provided an incredible learning experience. I then became a manager and established satellite accessibility teams within Reality Labs, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. I’m currently leading the accessibility design team at Facebook and collaborating closely with the central accessibility team at Meta.

Accessible design is good design. Designing with disabilities in mind results in better products and experiences for everyone, even those without disabilities. Curb cuts, for example, were designed for people using wheelchairs, but are also helpful for people using strollers, roller blades or bikes. Video captions are an example of a curb cut in the digital world. They were invented for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community in the 1960s, but now almost 90 percent of viewers watch content with captions, perhaps because they’re traveling, don’t want to disturb others or would like to better appreciate the script writing.

A design system is a collection or library of reusable components and standards (e.g. colors, fonts, design principles, copy guidelines) that help teams create consistent digital products at scale. Design systems help teams build standardized user experiences by reducing redundancy and establishing a shared language. Nearly 30 percent of accessibility issues can be remediated through upholding design system standards.

If an accessibility element is not a part of a design system, it’s more difficult to scale, and therefore may not be available across surfaces. Design systems are the engine and framework to make design and engineering teams work in the most efficient way, while shipping innovation and accessibility at scale. And a design system is not something that’s set in stone, either — it’s a living organism that requires continuous care.

Meta has vast teams and offerings. As a small example of how design systems can be used in practice to improve accessibility, let’s look at the Instagram and Facebook Stories ring, which is used today across surfaces to indicate new activity. Designers at Facebook and Instagram ensure the ring has an accessible line width and color contrast on platforms, so a blind or low-vision person can easily identify and use Stories across the two services.

We recently started a collaboration with the National Federation of the Blind to continue delivering accessible experiences across Meta platforms. As part of the collaboration, we’ve established recurring sessions to get frequent feedback directly from regular screen readers users on Facebook, Instagram and Reality Labs offerings. This will enable us to prioritize what truly matters to this population and update our product development roadmaps accordingly.

I'm pushing our teams to do more than what’s required. For example, color contrast is such a binary design decision that we can standardize in Meta design systems. How might we innovate to scale our design systems — and the accessibility solutions within them — across the company and technology industry? How can we leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to help us be more efficient in creating design systems, and free up designers to focus on more strategic and creative endeavors? These questions put accessibility at the forefront of innovation at Meta.