a quick rundown
The tl;dr
The Brief
Wikipedia stands for free knowledge, for everyone. Its iOS app is how more than half its readers actually access that. When iOS 26 shipped Liquid Glass, we had a specific, timely reason to ask: does the app still hold up for users who need it to?
The Constraint
Wikipedia runs on donations. Paid participant research wasn't on the table — so we did the next best thing. We spent time with specialists, research papers, and lived experience resources to build personas we could actually emulate, not just reference.
The Result
13 findings, three tiers, ranked by how much they block access and how fast they can be fixed. The audit caught what breaks. The walkthrough caught what doesn't work — features that pass a checklist but fall apart the moment a real person with real constraints tries to use them.
Role
Product Manager and Accessibility Specialist
Team
5 Accessibility Specialists
Timeline
5 Weeks
Tools
IOS Accessibility settings, Flight Story
Overview
Access to information is a right, not a privilege
Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the internet. Their entire ethos is built on is free knowledge, for anyone, anywhere, no barriers.
But a mission statement only holds up if the interface does too. For users with disabilities, a confusing interaction, an unreadable label, or a gesture they can't perform isn't a minor inconvenience.
508 mil
Daily views on average
60%
Mobile users
(Pew Research Center, 2026 & Internal Wikimedia Data)
To keep their mission statement alive and maintin their quality with thier new iOS 26 introducing Liquid Glass, we had a timely opening to audit what had shifted, what could be made better and what needed to go.
How can we help uphold the promise of accessible knowledge for all?
our approach and methodology
how we aimed to Put the app to the test
Our approach was largely split into four parts for us to be able to achieve the 3 main goals aligned with the proejct and the were as follows:
Scoping
Defined two core flows for evaluation
(1) performing a search
(2) reading through articles and adjusting settings.
Persona Development
Built two personas spanning four disability profiles:
(1) low vision & situational (one-handed use)
(2) essential tremor & Asperger's
Cognitive Walkthrough
Stepped through each flow from the perspective of our personas — surfacing friction points that standards-based testing alone wouldn't catch.
WCAG 2.1/2.2 Audit
WCAG 2.1/2.2 Audit*
Audited flows against WCAG guidelines 2.1/2.2.
the personas
The people we're designing for
The process of creating out two personas was done with a lot of care. We didn't invent Mia and Arun, we built them — from specialist conversations, academic research, and lived experience resources. We couldn't bring in participants for this study because of a lack of resources but we wanted to pout in as much time and fort into it so we could emulate their experience rather than just imagine it.
what we found
13 findings. Three tiers of priority.
5
Tier I — Critical
5
Tier II — Significant
3
Tier III — Enhancement
Tier 1 - Critical
Hyperlinks lack non-color differentiation
WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.1 - Use of Color
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Tier 1 - Critical
Icon stroke insufficient under frosted glass - and doesn't respond to Dynamic Type
WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.11 — Non-text Contrast
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Tier 1 - Critical
Save confirmation auto-dismisses - and the feature itself is conceptually unclear
WCAG 2.1 SC 2.2.1 — Timing Adjustable & Lack of Affordance
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Tier 1 - Critical
Key elements excluded from VoiceOver
WCAG 4.1.3 — Status Messages; WCAG 4.1.2 — Name, Role, Value
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Tier 1 - Critical
No indicators for image gallery navigation
WCAG 2.5.1 — Pointer Gestures (A)
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