Marketing being a fact of things, it is still refreshing to see a more inclusive definition of accessibility, thank you.
Just investing time on this is credit to those who honestly try to make a difference, and talking about it helps improve things.
But inclusive design, let’s be honest, it does not come from having a sample of those who are deemed needing to be included polled and surveyed. It is about being inclusive early on, in the design process.
This I find troubling a view on inclusive design:
Research
Cover accessibility and inclusive design issues when conducting user research. Consider potential visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive disabilities.
Incorporate accessibility considerations in your personas, or user stories.
When possible, include users with different abilities in user research.
And:
Testing
Adopt an inclusive user testing. When possible, include users with different abilities in user testing and make sure to allow them to use their own equipment.
It is discouraging to frame things in the sense that someone needs your help, or your are helping, because all we doing here is correcting course of our social sense of misleading privilege. Just because focusing on mainstream demands for decades forced a non-inclusive paradigm, does not make it the standard, those who are not happy in it needing “help”.
The right mix of people to brainstorm, affect and negotiate on how to not hurt the experience of some while narrowly focusing on the wrong priorities.
And, the fact that we say UX, when inclusive is about the experience of many-to-many interactions, it leads to many-to-one and one-to-many frustrations on the CX of so called accommodations for accessibility needs.
Feedback not being inclusive (ie issues being public domain only, or dead-drop without feedback on the feedback, closing loops… etc.) or not being verbose (ie poll and surveys to find validation to own assumptions) those do not close gaps. The only gaps that ever get closed are for those lucky to find privacy-sensitive and verbose mediums to connect.
So, inclusive design… inclusive inclusive design, community, and feedback, please.
