Accessibility in Action: A Conversation with Kate Molloy

Digital workplaces have become central to how teams collaborate, share information, and get work done. But there’s a critical gap many organisations overlook: not everyone can access these spaces equally. When tools, platforms, and content aren’t designed with accessibility in mind, you’re effectively excluding people from participation. That might mean someone using a screen reader can’t navigate a SharePoint site, or someone with colour blindness misses crucial information in a chart, or someone with dyslexia struggles with poorly structured content. It affects a significant portion of the workforce, including people with permanent disabilities, those managing temporary injuries, neurodivergent team members, and countless others in specific situations.

At Silicon Reef, we work with organisations building digital workplaces in Microsoft 365. We see firsthand how accessibility decisions ripple through an organisation’s culture and effectiveness. When people can actually use the tools you’ve built for them, engagement goes up, productivity improves, and you’re tapping into the full potential of your team. We’ve made accessibility central to how we approach design and delivery because we recognise that inclusive design benefits everyone, and we have a responsibility to build better.

We wanted to dig deeper into what this means in practice, so we sat down with Kate Molloy, our UX Lead, who’s spent years thinking about these questions. Kate has worked on projects ranging from public sector organisations to global enterprises, and she’s developed a pragmatic, human-centred approach to accessibility. Her insights offer a useful counterpoint to some of the myths around accessibility—that it’s expensive, that it compromises design, that it should be bolted on at the end. None of that holds up in practice.

Question: Kate, you’re known internally as our accessibility champion. How did that come about? 

Kate: I’ve been a UX designer at Silicon Reef for about five years, but my passion for accessibility really started during a project for the Met Office. Accessibility was a legal requirement for them, so we did extensive testing with real users. Seeing firsthand how poor accessibility impacts people—and how much better their experience becomes when we get it right—was a turning point for me. It made me realise this is something we should be talking about with all our customers. 

Question: Some organisations see accessibility as a legal obligation. Is it more than that? 

Kate: Absolutely. Accessibility isn’t just for a minority—it benefits everyone. Disabled people aren’t an edge case; they’re a significant part of the population. And when you factor in neurodiversity or something as common as colour blindness, the spectrum is huge. Our goal is to make tools as inclusive as possible. Why wouldn’t you want what you build to be usable for the widest audience? 

Question: Do you think attitudes towards accessibility are changing? 

Kate: Definitely. Legal requirements and guidelines have raised awareness, and tools like SharePoint are making accessibility easier to achieve. It’s no longer acceptable to treat it as an afterthought. Organisations are starting to see the benefits—better usability, inclusivity, and engagement. 

Question: Speaking of tools, what strides have you seen in Microsoft 365? 

Kate: Progress is slow but steady. SharePoint now has an accessibility assistant that flags issues like poor colour contrast or missing alt text for images. These features help content editors make improvements before publishing. PowerPoint has similar tools for reading order. They’re small steps, but they make a big difference. 

Question: What are the most common accessibility mistakes you see? 

Kate: Two big ones: heading structure and alternative text for images. Headings are crucial for screen readers, so skipping levels or using formatting instead of proper heading tags creates confusion. And alt text is often missing—even for important diagrams. We had a client in Johannesburg with poor internet connectivity; images wouldn’t load, so without alt text, critical information was lost. Accessibility serves people in all sorts of situations, not just those with permanent disabilities. 

Question: Emojis are everywhere these days. Are they an issue? 

Kate: They can be. Screen readers read out the emoji name, so a sentence followed by five trophy emojis becomes “trophy, trophy, trophy…”—which is frustrating. Emojis are fine in moderation, but they shouldn’t replace important text, and you need to be mindful of their meaning. 

Question: Is designing for SharePoint different from designing for a website? 

Kate: The principles are the same, but you need to understand how SharePoint stacks content on smaller screens. Multi-column layouts can look great on desktop but fall apart on mobile. Testing on different devices is essential. 

Question: Does accessibility mean compromising on design? 

Kate: Not at all. You can have beautiful, branded designs that are fully accessible. It’s about getting the foundations right—structure, headings, colour contrast—and then layering on the visuals thoughtfully. 

Question: Should accessibility be considered from the start? 

Kate: 100%. It’s not an afterthought. We use page templates as an opportunity to embed best practice and educate content editors. And the best thing you can do is involve real users—people with disabilities, people using assistive tech—during design and testing. Their feedback is invaluable. 

Question: If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be? 

Kate: Test with real users. I’ve learned more from observing five people using assistive technologies than from any guideline. It’s the most effective way to make sure what you build is truly accessible. 

The approach Kate describes — pragmatic, grounded in real user experience, embedded from the start — reflects how we work at Silicon Reef.

Accessibility isn’t something we treat as separate from design; it runs through everything we do. The organisations we work with consistently find that the platforms that work well for everyone tend to perform better overall: they’re clearer, faster, more intuitive.

We’ve watched engagement numbers improve across the board when accessibility is treated as a core principle rather than an afterthought. It’s worth doing both because it makes sense and because it increasingly matters to the organisations we partner with.

The question isn’t really whether to invest in accessibility anymore, instead how to build it in from day one.