Accessibility Persona Len

Understand accessibility barriers by experiencing them firsthand.

Accessibility Persona Lens helps designers, developers, and product teams build empathy for users with different access needs. Based on the official GOV.UK Accessibility Personas developed by the Government Digital Service, this extension simulates real interaction barriers — not to replicate lived experiences, but to reveal friction points in your designs.

7 Personas, 7 Perspectives
Each persona represents a real pattern of web usage:

Claudia — Screen magnifier user with partial sight. Simulates 400% zoom, inverted colours, and highlighted focus.

Ashleigh — Screen reader user who is severely sight impaired. Applies heavy blur to encourage screen reader testing.

Ron — Older user with arthritis, hearing loss, and cataracts. Simulates mild visual impairment and
motor difficulties.

Chris — Keyboard-only user with colour vision deficiency. Disables mouse interaction and applies greyscale.

Pawel — Autistic user sensitive to distractions. Adds visual and audio distractions to simulate concentration difficulties.

Simone — Dyslexic user. Applies dyslexia-friendly styling with letter scrambling to simulate reading challenges.

Saleem — Deaf user whose first language is BSL. Converts text to demonstrate reading in a second language.

Use Cases
✓ Design reviews and accessibility audits
✓ Developer testing and QA
✓ Stakeholder demonstrations
✓ Accessibility training workshops
✓ Building team empathy

No data collection. No tracking. All preferences are stored locally on your device.

Credits
Persona profiles adapted from GOV.UK Accessibility Personas (© Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0). Simulation techniques include open-source contributions from GDS, Metamatrix AB, and other contributors.

Important: These simulations demonstrate interaction barriers, not lived experiences. They are tools for understanding, not representations of disability.