Accessibility: The Illustrated Guide

What this book is

Packt published this as a graphic-format guide to inclusive digital communication. Rather than restating guidelines, it draws them. The recurring cast is a set of animal characters with different disabilities and access needs, including a neurodivergent tech professional panda, a blind owl professor, and a postpartum kangaroo.

The publisher's framing says it plainly: "You don't need to be an accessibility expert to make a difference. You just need to care enough to begin." At 148 pages, Packt estimates about four and a half hours of reading. That makes it the lightest read of the year and an easy one to finish over the holidays.

What it covers

Packt lists six outcomes for readers:

• Making social media posts, email, documents, and presentations accessible
• Writing effective alt text
• Designing inclusive slides
• Hosting meetings and events where everyone can participate
• Communicating respectfully with disabled people, including etiquette and common missteps
• Using AI responsibly when creating accessible content

No table of contents has been published yet. The list above comes from the publisher's product page, not from the book's chapters.

About the authors

Nandita Gupta

Nandita is a product and accessibility leader at Cisco with more than ten years building AI products, and she holds the CPACC credential. She has a bachelor's in electrical engineering and a master's in human-computer interaction. Her work centers on making AI usable for the 1.3 billion people worldwide who have a disability.

She was inducted into the Susan M. Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame and named to ADCOLOR in Tech in 2024. She has spoken at Grace Hopper Celebration, M-Enabling, and UX Talks Tokyo, and her TEDx talk "Look Within Yourself: Embarking on my Accessibility Journey" was recorded at TEDxGeorgiaTechSalon. She serves on several non-profit boards, including Lime Connect.

Members will recognize her. Nandita was a contributing author on Inclusive Design for Accessibility and joined us for the September 2025 author Q and A.

Rachel Grossman-Kahn

Rachel leads accessibility and inclusive design at a Fortune Top 10 technology company in Seattle, working on Audible at Amazon. She has been in and around the disability community professionally for more than sixteen years, and she is disabled herself.

Before design, she spent a decade as a professional sign language interpreter for d/Deaf and DeafBlind communities, and a few years at Walt Disney Animation Studios. She holds an MS in UX design, a BA in visual arts, and an associate's degree in ASL interpreting. She sits on the Foundation Board of Directors at Lighthouse for the Blind. Earlier project work includes the Assistive Technology Hub for Best Buy and a 5G football helmet built with AT&T for d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing athletes.

Fun facts

• Our mascot is an owl. One of the book's recurring characters is a blind owl professor. Nobody planned this.
• Packt credits no separate illustrator, so who actually drew the book is an open question. Good one to put to the authors.
• At 148 pages this is the shortest book on the 2026 list by a wide margin.
• Rachel's path into accessibility design ran through Walt Disney Animation Studios and a decade of ASL interpreting.

Discussion topics for December

• Illustration as a teaching method. What does a drawing convey that a success criterion cannot, and what gets lost on the way?
• A book taught through pictures raises an obvious question about its own accessibility. How should an illustrated guide handle alt text, described figures, and its ebook edition?
• The AI material. Where does generated content genuinely help accessibility work, and where does it quietly manufacture more remediation?
• Etiquette and missteps. Bring one thing you got wrong early in your career and whatever corrected you.
• Who in your organization would actually read this, and what would you want them doing differently on Monday?