Almost everything you own now sits behind a password.
Accounted For shows you how to organize your digital life, protect it, and prepare it for the people you love, on your own terms.
They arrive in your inbox as an EPUB for your phone, tablet or e-reader, and you hear the day the book can be ordered.
My writing has been published by Oxford University Press, Elsevier and ACM. Accounted For is my first trade book.
- JPMorgan Chase
- Apple
- Oracle
- T‑Mobile
- Smartsheet
- Green Dot
- Persado
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
- UCSF
- Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University
- General Assembly
It was never a discipline problem.
Nobody sits down and decides to keep their passwords in three places, their documents in five, and the recovery codes on a phone they no longer own. It piles up. Every account you opened in a hurry. Every file you saved somewhere sensible at the time. Every service that changed its name.
And it holds up, right until the day it doesn’t. You get a new phone. You change your number. You spend a week in the hospital. Then all at once, you find out how much of your life was held together by memory alone.
That is not a character flaw. It is a missing system, and this book is that system.
48%
of US adults have no instructions for their digital accounts and files
23%
have a will, and still have no digital instructions
61%
of US consumers reuse passwords across their accounts
Trust & Will 2026 Estate Planning Report, a survey of 5,000 US adults by Talker Research, January 2026. Password reuse: GoDaddy Consumer Pulse, 2025. Having a will is not the same as having a plan.
Organizing is how it starts. The handover is how it ends.
- 1
Organize
Every account, who pays for it, and how you get back in, written down in one record you can find on a bad day.
- 2
Protect
Two-step sign-in, a locked phone number, and the scams that work on careful people.
- 3
Prepare
A plan for the people you love, ready on your own terms, for when a specific event happens and not before.
“Life has highs and lows. You do not get to choose when the lows arrive. What you do get to choose is what you set up while things are good.”
Ashley Karr, Accounted For
Accessibility, trust and safety, and product research and design.
There are two ways to work with me. Consult with me directly, one to one or alongside your team. Or bring me in to teach and train your group.
Consulting
Work directly with me.
Accessibility audits
I test your site or app against WCAG 2.2 AA with screen readers, keyboards, captions and zoom, rank what to fix first, and help your team fix it.
Honest IT support
Locked out, hacked, or just overwhelmed? Thirty minutes on Google Meet with someone who will never ask for your password. $99, booked online.
Fractional product research and design
A principal designer and researcher on your team, part time. I watch people use what you built, show you where they stop and why, and design the fix with you.
Teaching and training
For your team, your students, or your group.
Workshops, trainings and talks
Accessibility, trust and safety, and product research and design, taught to your team in plain language they can use the next morning.
Online classes
Short, practical classes on LearnFormula and Skillshare, built from the same guides I use with clients.
What people say
Ashley is a force of nature.
Heidi LowrySenior Manager, Design
“Very good webinar. Key takeaway: Verification is not about doubt. It is about control. You stay in control when you verify.”
“Ashley possesses an infectious and almost knightly sense of integrity; which her team and students adopt very quickly.”
“I could always count on Ashley for her honest feedback, colorful stories, and good laughs.”
Tools for a well-kept digital life.
Things to read, download and give, made so you can start the day they arrive.
Free, useful, and yours to keep.
Pick what’s on your mind. Every one of these does a real job on its own, and none of them asks for a credit card number.
Find out where you stand in a few minutes.
The Digital Life Quiz covers organizing, protecting and preparing, and it ends by naming the one thing to do first. No account needed.
Hi, I’m Ashley.
I have worked for more than twenty years in accessibility, trust and safety, and product research and design. I helped create many of the systems our day-to-day lives depend on: banking, payments, identity and fraud protection. One of my roles was vice president of product research at JPMorgan Chase, and I hold a master’s degree in human factors and systems engineering.
Accessibility is the foundation of everything I do. I have also been on the wrong end of fraud and scams, so I write books, teach, and build the tools I wished I’d had. Whatever brought you here, I am glad you came.
- 20+ years
- Product research and design
- 10,000+
- People trained
- 1 billion+
- Users of products I helped build
Tell me what you’re working on.
An audit, a talk, a question about the book, or something I haven’t thought of. If I can help, I will.
Start with the first chapters of Accounted For.
Free, in your inbox right away, and you’ll hear the day the book can be ordered.