Ally, your accessibility companion WIP
Why I'm building an accessibility checker and how it will be used
ROLE
Product Designer
DURATION
3-4 week design sprint
TOOLS
Claude Code, Pen.dev, Vercel, Supabase, Glaze
TEAM
Myself, with design reviews
I've started to build the tool I wish I had years ago - and it's very much a work in progress
How it started
Below was the first iteration I showed the design team of what I created a while back that has proved really useful for me when checking colour contrast with tokens and design. Albeit this isn't pretty to look at, it's very functional.
So I'm going to give Ally a wee makeover to make it much more user-friendly and more delightful to use.
What is Ally?
Ally is a play on A11y - which of course is shorthand for accessibility. I couldn't find a free or efficient way to check whether your designs pass on a host of different accessibility principles.
This is where Ally comes in. You can run designs through the tool and see whether users with specific needs can understand or use your product.
Design direction 1
I started to explore a Raycast like mini-app to enact the companion name. Althought this doesn't look terrible, semantic-search for every feature wouldn't work here.
It might help in finding specific key words or helping the user learn specific WCAG reccommendations.
How's it going so far? Design direction 2
I wanted to see if I could build it agentically, but I can't quite get the level of craft I want without my design input. The next step would be to build it as a MacOS app, so I've explored that here with a sidebar nav.
AI also isn't great at information architecture, so I'm going to build out both the designs and architecture first to then collaborate more effectively.
Why I'm building it
Aformentioned, anyone can build anything but are they buildings the right thing?
I believe Ally will not only help me in my practice, but other designers in the team as well. There's even the option of showcasing this tool to stakeholders to educate them effectively also.
How it's built
The initial code for the prototype is complete, and has been created with Claude Code. It's a simple html file now, but the corpus is where the magic will happen.
Ingesting current WCAG procedures, UX laws etc will make this exceedingly beneficial. Designs are with Pen.dev and I am exploring Paper as well currently. Backend and hosting are Supabase and Vercel, but eventually I want to make this into a desktop app using Glaze.
Constantly tinkering
This is very much a work in progress and I'll be constantly updating this page with advancements, and eventually prototypes.
Ally, your accessibility companion WIP
Why I'm building an accessibility checker and how it will be used
ROLE
Product Designer
3-4 week design sprint
TOOLS
Claude Code, Pencil.dev, Vercel, Supabase, Glaze
TEAM
Myself, with design reviews
I've started to build the tool I wish I had years ago - and it's very much a work in progress
What is Ally?
Ally is a play on A11y - which of course is shorthand for accessibility. I couldn't find a free or efficient way to check whether your designs pass on a host of different accessibility principles.
This is where Ally comes in. You can run designs through the tool and see whether users with specific needs can understand or use your product.
How it started
Below was the first iteration I showed the design team of what I created a while back that has proved really useful for me when checking colour contrast with tokens and design. Albeit this isn't pretty to look at, it's very functional.
So I'm going to give Ally a wee makeover to make it much more user-friendly and more delightful to use.
Design direction 1
I started to explore a Raycast like mini-app to enact the companion name. Althought this doesn't look terrible, semantic-search for every feature wouldn't work here.
It might help in finding specific key words or helping the user learn specific WCAG reccommendations.
How's it going so far? Design direction 2
I wanted to see if I could build it agentically, but I can't quite get the level of craft I want without my design input.
AI also isn't great at information architecture, so I'm going to build out both the designs and architecture first to then collaborate more effectively.
Why I'm building it
Aformentioned, anyone can build anything but are they buildings the right thing?
I believe Ally will not only help me in my practice, but other designers in the team as well. There's even the option of showcasing this tool to stakeholders to educate them effectively also.
How it's built
The initial code for the prototype is complete, and has been created with Claude Code. It's a simple html file now, but the corpus is where the magic will happen.
Ingesting current WCAG procedures, UX laws etc will make this exceedingly beneficial. Designs are with Pen.dev and I am exploring Paper as well currently. Backend and hosting are Supabase and Vercel, but eventually I want to make this into a desktop app using Glaze.
Constantly tinkering
This is very much a work in progress and I'll be constantly updating this page with advancements, and eventually prototypes.