ATLAS
Accessibility Overhaul for a Financial Workspace
YEAR
2022
BUILD
4 weeks
Atlas served institutional clients with strict accessibility procurement requirements, and its interface predated most of them. I audited every surface, rebuilt the color and typography system to hold contrast across all states, restructured focus order and keyboard navigation through complex nested workflows, and rewrote component semantics for screen reader coherence. The constraint turned out to be a design tool: clearer hierarchy, calmer visual weight, and fewer ambiguous states for every user. Compliance became a byproduct of better architecture rather than a compliance exercise.
Facing strict accessibility procurement requirements from institutional clients, I inherited a legacy interface that fundamentally predated modern compliance standards. I initiated an exhaustive audit of every product surface, which led to a complete rebuild of the underlying color and typography systems to guarantee sustained contrast across all interactive states. Furthermore, I systematically restructured focus order and keyboard navigation through densely nested workflows, while entirely rewriting core component semantics to ensure absolute coherence and reliability for screen reader technologies.
Rather than treating accessibility as a restrictive, box-ticking compliance exercise, these strict technical constraints ultimately served as a powerful foundational design tool. The rigorous requirements inherently forced a much clearer visual hierarchy, resulting in a calmer overall visual weight and the complete elimination of ambiguous interface states for all users, regardless of ability. Ultimately, institutional regulatory compliance became a natural, effortless byproduct of a vastly improved, universally inclusive architectural framework.
