Can accessibility be contextual?

I’ve known for a minute or two now (thanks Marcelo Paiva!) that accessibility isn’t just some checklist.

It’s not something you pass or fail, nor is it a set of boxes you tick off before launch. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. Good accessibility, in my experience, almost has to be personal. It should be the ultimate expression of well-designed UX, shaped around how real, live human people actually interact with what you have made. It’s empathy, adaptation and flexibility - not rules and rigidity.

But what happens when it can’t be?

Designing and building out the museum's public touchscreen exhibits has added yet another layer to what I had mistakenly considered to be a rock-solid set of beliefs. Ironically, my philosophy on how accessibility should be flexible and tailored itself needed to be flexible enough to bend back around to allow for a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

The touchscreens are public displays that anyone might walk up to, not personal devices. There’s no login, no saved preferences, no onboarding. The users range from kids to retirees, from locals to international visitors. Some tap through once and move on; others linger for a dozen minutes before leaving the screen for the next person.

That kind of environment forces a different way of thinking.

Normally, I lean on patterns that adapt experiences around a user. Adjustable type sizes, handfuls of color themes, font family selection, overall spacing, reduced motion settings. I love building out those kinds of patterns, where accessibility can be dialed in by the person in front of the screen. But in a shared physical space like a museum, those same tools can backfire.

You can’t store someone’s choices without risking confusion for the next visitor. You can’t rely on a returning user, or assume anyone will know how to change a setting back. There’s no my preferences here, there can only be our defaults.

Accessibility in this context becomes something uniquely environmental. Not about limiting inclusivity (thankfully), but about adapting it to the realities of the space. For the museum, that means thinking in layers:

• Can someone in a wheelchair reach and comfortably interact with every touch target presented to them?
• Will the navigation make sense to someone whose first (or third!) language isn’t English?
• Can older visitors (who may not be as comfortable with touchscreens) feel confident exploring without fear of “breaking” something?
• How do we gracefully reset the experience for the next visitor without losing performance or mistakenly switching back the screen in the middle of someone’s experience?

These aren’t global WCAG questions. They’re contextual ones. They belong to this space, these visitors, and this kind of interaction.

That means designing touch targets that are large enough for uncertain fingers, colors whose contrast hold up under gallery lighting, and navigation paths so shallow that getting lost isn’t possible. It means anchoring interaction patterns to the bottom of the screen, anticipating both the height and angle of the touchscreen stands. Font sizes that land in that rare sweet spot of being comfortable for nearly everyone, without needing to be personalized for anyone. It means inactivity timers designed to intelligently determine the difference between taking some extra time to work through a chunk of text and having continued on to the next exhibit.

It’s a challenge that forces a different mindset. You have to think less about giving users control and more about removing friction altogether. You don’t design for ongoing engagement but for micro-moments of clarity: one glance, one tap, one delightfully obvious next step.

The principles don’t change, but their expression has to. Designing for a public museum touchscreen is different from designing a banking app or a website. The metrics of success shift from Does it comply? to Does it invite?

In the end, accessibility isn’t about universal sameness. It’s about universal consideration. It’s the willingness to meet users where they are. Even if where they are is in front of a display they’ll only touch once.

And maybe that’s the core of it: accessibility as empathy, not enforcement. The better we understand context, the more gracefully we can design for it.