Accessibility in the Field Means Gloves, Glare, and One Free Hand

WCAG is the floor, not the ceiling — and for frontline apps, the standard compliance checklist misses the conditions that actually disable your users. I tell engineering leaders to design for situational accessibility alongside permanent disability, because in the field they collapse into the same requirements. A warehouse worker wearing gloves can't reliably hit a small tap target. A technician in direct sunlight can't read low-contrast gray-on-white. Someone on a loading dock has one free hand and a lot of ambient noise, so voice prompts fail and tap targets need to be large. These aren't edge cases; they're the daily operating environment. So I push for oversized touch targets, high-contrast modes that survive glare, large legible type, and workflows that prefer camera, QR, and a single confirming tap over multi-field forms. Screen reader support and proper focus order still matter — and they get easier when you've already minimized text entry. There's also a payoff R&D leaders care about: accessible-by-constraint design reduces input errors at the source, which means cleaner data flowing into your legacy HR and payroll systems and fewer support tickets. Build for the glove, the glare, and the one free hand, and you'll clear WCAG on the way.