# Digital Accessibility Designer on Starting His Own Business, Brutal Job Market, and Custom Design

- Channel: [The ADA Book](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnBOveah3DC9YmK4A_-J0BQ)
- Published: 2026-02-26
- Source video: [Watch on YouTube](https://youtube.com/watch?v=NmvgwIURPeg)
- Read on ReadTube: https://www.read.tube/p/videos/NmvgwIURPeg
- Language: Original (source language)

## Summary

**Accessibility Designer Builds Own Business**

De'Shan Perry explains how his background in graphic design, web development, and UX led him into digital accessibility and inspired him to start his own business. He says the tough job market pushed him toward contracting and entrepreneurship, while accessibility itself gives him a chance to do meaningful work, improve usability, and help more people access digital products.

De'Shan Perry says accessibility became the missing piece in a long career built on graphic design, HTML, CSS, and web development. After learning how much accessibility could improve real user experiences, he threw himself into classes, volunteer work, and practice, eventually focusing on remediation as his strongest service and launching artofa11y.com as a design-and-accessibility business.

He describes the post-layoff job search as discouraging and inefficient, with keyword filters, AI-written postings, huge applicant pools, vague listings, and little feedback making the process feel like time lost. That experience pushed him to build his own path through contract work and client outreach, while still staying open to the right job if it appears.

- Accessibility is both a technical discipline and an ethical one, in his view.
- Small businesses have an advantage because they can offer more personal, attentive service than large companies.
- Remediation, visual design, and usability are his core strengths.
- He argues that accessibility and strong design are not opposites; accessible sites can still look distinctive and polished.
- Simple changes like contrast, hierarchy, keyboard focus, and proper heading structure can make a major difference.
- He wants to help newer companies build accessible foundations and improve user experience from the start.
- He recommends tools and communities like Calendly, Google Workspace, Stripe, Slack, and Discord for getting started and staying connected.

A major theme of the conversation is that accessibility should not be treated as a niche specialty. De'Shan says everyone on a team, from designers to engineers to executives, needs some awareness of accessibility for it to stick, and he sees community education as key to making the field sustainable and growing his business.