A platform is only as good as the people who can actually use it.

The problem

Platform frontends fail in a specific way. They get designed on a fast laptop with a big screen and a fast connection, then shipped to an audience holding a mid-range phone on patchy mobile data. Everything that felt smooth in design review becomes friction in the real world.

Lafie Plus needed a frontend that would not fall apart under those conditions, and would remain usable for people relying on screen readers, keyboard navigation, or larger text.

• Interfaces that assume a desktop-sized screen and break below it
• Accessibility deferred until after launch, when it is expensive to retrofit
• Heavy pages that stall on mobile data
• Interaction patterns that only work with a mouse

What we built

We built the Lafie Plus frontend in React and deployed it on Vercel, designing for the smallest screen first and treating accessibility as part of the definition of done rather than a later pass.

In practice that means semantic markup, real focus states, keyboard paths through every interactive flow, and colour contrast checked as the design was built instead of after it shipped.

• Mobile-first responsive layout that scales up rather than squeezing down
• Semantic HTML structure, so assistive technology reads the page correctly
• Visible focus states and complete keyboard navigation on every interactive element
• Colour contrast validated during the build, not audited afterwards
• Reduced-motion support, so animation never becomes a barrier
• Clean component structure the client's team can extend without us

The impact

Accessibility work is mostly invisible when it goes well, which makes it easy to skip and easy to undersell. The measurable outcome is simple: fewer people bounce off the platform because it did not work for them.

Lafie Plus also got a codebase their own team can build on. We are glad when a client outgrows needing us for every change, because a platform that only its original builder can touch is a liability.