I was running an accessibility audit for a platform last month. Everything seemed solid at first glance. Clean design, responsive layout, intuitive controls. It wasn't until I ditched my mouse and started navigating purely with my keyboard that the cracks began to show.
Accessibility was overengineered. ARIA attributes were everywhere like decorative band-aids, where simpler native controls would have worked just as well or better. I thought about how these things were just complexity masquerading as sophistication.
The good news was the most of these issues were the same on all the key user flows. And it reminded me of the Pareto Principle, also known as the "80/20" rule. For many events, roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes.
In this case, it was:
- Unnecessary ARIA attributes
- Unlabelled form controls
- Skip links
If I gave them an endless list of all the things they could improve, it would have felt overwhelming and likely unachievable. So I made one simple suggestion.
Fix the low-effort, high-impact issues.
And I gave them a list of the top high-impact accessibility wins they can implement in a day. The 20% that can solve 80% of the problems. I prioritised the tasks based on their perceived impact.
Here's the thing.
We don't have to spend an insane amount of time trying to do too many things. Instead, if we find the few things that can make a real difference, it will yield greater results.
But here's what's important. Just because you do 20% of the things that will get you 80% of the value, it doesn't mean you give anything less than 100% of your best effort.