Accessibility & web engineering
Lumen Health
WCAG 2.2 AA engineered into the design system, not retrofitted per page
A patient-facing portal was failing accessibility review page by page, with each fix re-introducing the same defect somewhere else. Grafiesto moved the standard down a level: the design system components became the place accessibility is guaranteed, so pages inherit it.
Lumen Health
Accessibility & web engineering
Inside the project
Context before craft. Decisions before decoration. The story behind the finished surface.
Not a reveal. A reason.
A patient-facing portal was failing accessibility review page by page, with each fix re-introducing the same defect somewhere else. Grafiesto moved the standard down a level: the design system components became the place accessibility is guaranteed, so pages inherit it.
The starting point
What needed to change
Remediation was being tracked as a list of pages. Every sprint closed a handful and opened a handful more, because the underlying components — a custom select, a modal without focus management, an icon button with no accessible name — were reproducing the same defects everywhere they were used.
The work
How we found the shape
Audit findings were re-attributed from pages to the components that caused them. Each component was then rebuilt against WCAG 2.2 AA: semantic structure, keyboard operation, visible focus that survives both themes, accessible names, touch target sizing, and a reduced-motion path. Contrast was checked in light and dark rather than in the design file alone.
What shifted
The difference it made
New pages inherit the standard by construction, and accessibility review shifted from a per-page audit to a component-level regression check.
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