Empathize via Inclusive Design
Technology is not limited for just a set of users, the power and usage of technology must be expanded and extended to help every human diversity and one must always remember, like Paul Hogan, a founding member of the Institute for Design and Disability, said: “Good design enables, bad design disables”
We are in the digital age, our day to day activities begin with our interactions with different kinds of digital products and services. Digitalization aims to help the User ease their life, and also be able to use it anywhere, anytime. As we all know digitalization has not limited to any particular age group but in fact, every age group is being benefited from this, for instance:
- Think of a kid trying to learn phonics using Youtube or through any other learning platform
- An adult using fitness apps to get healthier,
- A senior citizen getting online medical assistance and also getting their medicines delivered to their doorstep;
For almost every situation and everyone, various digital products and services have been striving hard to satisfy their users’ needs — emotionally, ethically, and by overall humanizing their digital experience.
While building a digital platform it is important to holistically think to provide an experience that would benefit the user to use it seamlessly,
What are we making?
and
Who uses it?
matters a lot, while designing a product it is vital to think through the conditions that humans are facing or might face, like:
- Can the product be used by someone suffering from color blindness?
- Can the product still be used by someone who is going through sight problems due to age?
- Can a single-handed person use the product?
- Can someone with a migraine issue use the product seamlessly? and goes on.
About 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability
This 15 % of the population cannot be left out and deprived of their rights, technology is perceiving and growing, disability should not be the constraints to stop themselves from using them, also from a business perspective if a segment of users with disabilities is neglected then they would fail to reach its full market potential.
“We all will have disabilities eventually, unless we die first.”
-Gregg Vanderheiden
Disabilities don't just mean — individuals who have visual, motor, auditory, speech or cognitive disabilities, but as seen in the above picture, there could be scenarios like permanent disability, temporary disability or situational conditions or even there could be scenarios like one might be facing multiple disabilities at a time having said, one must understand that we’re all disabled in many contexts and circumstances, by considering all range of situations with an intention to include wider users range, basically while crafting a digital platform one must always intend to look into the way that no matter what it should be useful and serve the purpose a product.
“Look at the opportunity of design to empower everyone”
— Dan Formosa, smart design
As a designer, it should always be our goal to build empathy within the product/ services, hence practicing Inclusive design approach— “which is a mindset for designing digital platforms that are accessible and usable by as many people as possible” is crucially important, by such an approach or adaptation we are empathizing as well as including users, and it is our primary responsibility to think and work to create products that provide the ability to interact with technology while restriction across user and use case can vary.
“ Pay special attention to their unique needs”
Some of the good inclusive designs approaches are:
- Audiobooks
- Flexible straws
- Subtitles and captioning
- Automatic door sensors
- IOT digital sensors, etc.
Understanding Principles of Inclusive design
Microsoft has proposed inclusive design principles that are worth studying and incorporating. They focus on recognizing exclusion as the first step toward inclusive UX. They encourage designers to learn from diversity. summarised Microsoft’s Inclusive design principles.
- Recognize exclusion
Exclusion happens when we solve problems using our own biases. Seek out exclusions as opportunities to create new ideas and inclusive designs. - Learn from human diversity
Human beings are the real experts in adapting to diversity. The inclusive design puts people at the center from the very start of the process, and those fresh, diverse perspectives are the key to true insight. - Solve for one, extend to many
Everyone has abilities, and limits to those abilities. Designing for people with disabilities actually results in designs that benefit people, universally. Constraints are a beautiful thing.
Tips to design for Inclusive
All companies will reap the rewards of adopting a more inclusive mindset in their product creation. And early adopters will have a clear advantage over others. Here are a few reasons why you should be creating inclusive products:
- It is good for business.
- Protects you against lawsuits.
- It increases creativity.
- It is the right thing to do.
Also, make sure that you’re investing adequately in user research right at the beginning of your project. Gaining a basic understanding of the main categories of disabilities, limitations, or constraints that affect how people use digital services is necessary
Some important considerations while designing are as below:
- Keep things simple
- Practice and implement WCAG guidelines
- Minimize the need to type or text search. Whenever possible, allow voice input, autocomplete text fields, and present browseable interfaces
- On mobile: primary actions should be doable with the left or right thumb and touch targets at least 48px and separated by 8px.
- Emphasize recognition over recall
- Ensure that the information architecture matches the mental models
- Use structural hierarchies that are obvious ad short
- Practice Aesthetic-Accessible design approach
- Provide closed captions for all audio content that contains useful information or provide transcripts for all audio content
- Use proximity to show a close relationship between elements on the screen
- Avoid hyperlinks longer than 10 words
- Avoid blinking, flickering or moving elements in your product
Test your design
The inclusive of products should also be checked and tested. Integrate inclusive as one of the parameters to look into at all stages of the product development, from the UX prototyping, to the user interviews and usability testing. It will help to better your understanding of the experience your users face.
In practice: Make sure to check your interface for accessibility compliance, and ask yourself whether it meets all of the above-mentioned criteria. Most importantly, test the product with the help of people whose needs and abilities are different from your own, and ask for feedback as to how those needs can be best met.
Some of the tools that can be used are:
- Google chrome Lighthouse — can run 30 accessibility tests.
- Stark- Plugin for Adobe XD, Sketch and Figma
- Color contrast analyzer
- Web extensions : AXE (chrome extension)
- Contrast ratio Analyzer
- Heading Map
- WCAG Luminosity
- WAVE — evaluates the overall level of accessibility for any given website.
- Color Oracle — displays your site’s colors like how a user with color blindness would see the page.
- Image Analyzer — examines website images and tests their compliance with accessibility standards.
Further reading
Do you want to read more about designing for everyone? Then, please do read these below articles:
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
7 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About Accessibility
Vox Media Accessibility Guidelines
Conclusion
Inclusive design is a mindset that means making sure no one is excluded, from initial conception, user research, prototyping, and building of products and services. To truly practice Inclusive Design, the range of access needs that people might have, needs to be considered at all stages in a project. We should create experiences that embrace and reflect that diversity. One way to add value to the digital experience is by starting with an inclusive approach.
