What designing for accessibility taught me about letting go of assumptions

When our team at 55 Minutes partnered with Rebirth Ensemble, Singapore’s first disability-led accessible art studio, to explore how visually impaired individuals experience art, I expected to learn a lot about accessibility. I didn’t know I would discover my own blind spots along the way.

The project began with a simple question: how might visually impaired individuals enjoy and connect with visual art independently through audio? 

As designers, we’re trained to empathise. We create personas, map journeys, and interview users. Yet throughout this project, I found myself repeatedly defaulting to experiences shaped by my own perspective as a sighted user. Many decisions that felt obvious to me turned out to be based on assumptions I didn’t even realise I was making.

Accessibility solutions cannot exist in isolation

A guided tactile tour at National Gallery Singapore

One of the most valuable parts of our research was attending a guided tactile tour organised by our Research Partner, National Gallery Singapore, alongside visually impaired participants. The session featured the Hands-on Learning and Development (HOLD) Collection, where participants explored a tactile adaptation of Raden Saleh’s Boschbrand (Forest Fire) (1849). The painting had been translated into textured layers, allowing visitors to explore different elements of the composition through touch.

The experience itself was engaging. Guided by a museum facilitator, participants explored each tactile layer while listening to the artwork’s story, before ending with a discussion where they shared their own interpretations. It demonstrated how thoughtfully designed tactile experiences can create meaningful connections with art.

What surprised us was that the biggest accessibility barriers are often not the tactile experience itself, but the "invisible" infrastructure around it - wayfinding, up-to-date information, and the ease of accessing resources like tactile booklets. Our time exploring the HOLD Collection at National Gallery Singapore underscored just how much these supporting touchpoints shape whether an accessibility feature is truly usable, a finding that became central to how we approached our designing a solution.

That became one of the first lessons of the project: accessibility solutions cannot exist in isolation. No matter how well designed the solution is, it can only be truly accessible when the surrounding ecosystem is equally accessible.

More information, not less

Before the project, I assumed accessibility was largely about making existing information available in alternative formats. If a sighted visitor could see something, our role was to help visually impaired users access that same information through another medium.

Our interviews revealed a bigger opportunity. Participants were not asking for simplified descriptions. In many cases, they wanted significantly more detail than museums typically provide. They wanted to know the scale of an artwork, how figures were positioned within a composition, how colours were used, and which details drew attention first. Beyond the visual elements, they also wanted context: the artist’s intentions, historical background, and different interpretations of the work.

A basic description might tell someone what objects appear in a painting, but it does not necessarily help them understand how those elements relate to one another or why they matter. 

That insight became one of the foundations of Arty, an audio-first museum companion prototype we designed for visually impaired users. Rather than treating audio description as a direct substitute for vision, we designed a richer audio experience: basic artwork information, structured visual descriptions, immersive sound design, and podcast-style discussions that helped users build a mental image while forming their own interpretation.

Control matters more than curation

One concept we explored early in the project was a personalisation onboarding quiz. The idea was to ask users about their art preferences during onboarding and recommend relevant artworks from large museum collections.

At the time, it felt like a sensible solution. Museums contain thousands of artworks, and we assumed some level of guidance would make discovery easier. Testing suggested otherwise. Participants consistently preferred direct access to collections through search and filtering. They wanted the flexibility to browse, explore, and decide for themselves what was worth engaging with.

Being asked to answer a series of questions before reaching the content felt like an unnecessary step rather than a helpful one. In this case, reducing friction mattered more than tailoring recommendations. Giving users greater control ultimately created a simpler experience than trying to guide them through one.

Accessible patterns don’t guarantee an intuitive experience

A visually impaired research participant examines a work of art on his smart phone

To ensure Arty was highly accessible, we designed each screen around established accessibility patterns. Layouts were vertically stacked, horizontal carousels were avoided, and audio controls used large touch targets with simplified interactions. The assumption was that if individual screens followed accessibility best practices, the overall experience would naturally feel easy to use.

User testing showed that accessible screens were not enough. Participants could generally navigate individual screens, but they were sometimes unsure where they were in the larger journey or what to do next. Our initial flow moved users from onboarding to curated artworks, then into collections before finally reaching individual artworks. While this surfaced content quickly, it skipped the context users needed to understand what they were exploring.

During testing, participants often looked for that context first: which museum they were browsing, what exhibitions were available, and how artworks were organised within them. We restructured the flow around this mental model. Users now started by selecting a museum, then explored exhibitions, iconic artworks, or the full collection before accessing individual artworks.

The experience taught us that accessibility is not just about making individual screens usable. An experience only feels simple when the overall journey makes sense to the people navigating it.

Moving beyond the accessibility checklist

True inclusion is not about checking off WCAG boxes or adding accessibility features at the end of a project. Designing Arty forced us to think more carefully about information architecture, interaction states, content hierarchy, and the overall user journey.

Looking back, our most valuable takeaway wasn’t a specific compliance framework or design technique. It was recognising how quietly and quickly our own assumptions can compromise a user experience.

• We assumed existing audio guides only needed to describe what was on the canvas so that users can form their own thoughts and opinions on each piece of artwork; our research showed that users wanted rich visual details, historical context, and storytelling that helped them build a mental image and foster an emotional connection with the artwork.

  
  

• We assumed users wanted automated personalisation; testing showed they preferred direct access to collections and the freedom to explore on their own.

  
  

• We assumed simplified UI components and design layout would naturally create an intuitive experience; testing showed that accessible screens mean little if the overall journey doesn’t provide the context users need to understand where they are and what comes next.

Ultimately, many of the improvements we made for visually impaired users enriched the experience for everyone. Clearer navigation, stronger feedback, more predictable flows, and reduced cognitive load benefited all users, not just those using screen readers. Accessibility is not about designing for a small group of people. It is about designing experiences that work better for more people, in more situations.

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For a closer look at how we got to designing the Arty prototype, check out our detailed, step-by-step report.