Inclusive Design

Accessibility ensures that digital products, websites, applications, services and other interactive interfaces are designed and developed to be easy to use and understand by people with disabilities. 1.85 billion folks around the world who live with a disability or might live with more than one and are navigating the world through assistive technology or other augmentations to kind of assist with that with your interactions with the world around you. Meaning folks who live with disability, but also their caretakers,

their loved ones, their friends. All of this relates to the purchasing power of this community. Disability isn't a stagnant thing. We all have our life cycle. As you age, things change, your eyesight adjusts. All of these relate to disability. Designing accessibility is also designing for your future self. People with disabilities want beautiful designs as well. They want a slick interface. They want it to be smooth and an enjoyable experience. And so if you feel like

your design has gotten worse after you've included accessibility, it's time to start actually iterating and think, How do I actually make this an enjoyable interface to interact with while also making sure it's sets expectations and it actually gives people the amount of information they need. And in a way that they can digest it just as everyone else wants to digest that information for screen reader users a lot of it boils down to making sure you're always labeling

your interactive elements, whether it be buttons, links, slider components. Just making sure that you're giving enough information that people know how to interact with your website, with your design, with whatever that interaction looks like. Also, dark mode is something that came out of this community. So if you're someone who leverages that quite frequently. Font is a huge kind of aspect to think about in your design. A thin font that meets color contrast

can still be a really poor readability experience because of that pixelation aspect or because of how your eye actually perceives the text. What are some tangible things you can start doing to help this user group? Create inclusive and user-friendly experiences for all individuals.

Universal design is a design practice that is generally considered to be a design that has gone through all the design processes while hoping to take everyone into consideration. You just would have to design it in a way that everyone can use it. The *problem* with the approach of universal design is, though, that *you cannot really design for everyone*.

To design with 8 billion people in mind is strictly impossible: a design that is utopian or more academic or more a discourse subject rather than something that we can really and truly design. But you can do *inclusive design* as a part of design practices that strive for inclusion. The difference is that inclusive design is the umbrella above,

for example, accessible design because accessibility is an accommodation. It is checking boxes whether your design is truly accessible. And if it serves the purpose for your audiences. Inclusive design is the same umbrella. Universal design is more of a juxtaposition, but it's more battling against inclusive design because if you think of everyone, you think of no one.

And in this inclusive way, we can look towards architecture, we can look towards city planning and also how buildings are built in the past decades because they have taken aboard the inclusive approach. They do all the accommodations they can think of – for example, no stairs, ride towards those who have to take a wheelchair. Or it could be beneficial to people with a trolley or with something heavy that they have to carry.

So, thinking of this benefits everyone. And now imagine the internet being a public space, and how we can learn from city planning and architecture and interior design, that we are *accommodating those who need accommodation*. And that's what the inclusive approach is about. So, to sum this up, your research cannot be universal, because you cannot serve that, but it can be personalized and it can be also tailored to the needs of the audience you are serving.

Universal design is a design practice that is generally considered to be a design that has gone through all the design processes while hoping to take everyone into consideration. You just would have to design it in a way that everyone can use it. The *problem* with the approach of universal design is, though, that *you cannot really design for everyone*.

To design with 8 billion people in mind is strictly impossible: a design that is utopian or more academic or more a discourse subject rather than something that we can really and truly design. But you can do *inclusive design* as a part of design practices that strive for inclusion. The difference is that inclusive design is the umbrella above,

for example, accessible design because accessibility is an accommodation. It is checking boxes whether your design is truly accessible. And if it serves the purpose for your audiences. Inclusive design is the same umbrella. Universal design is more of a juxtaposition, but it's more battling against inclusive design because if you think of everyone, you think of no one.

And in this inclusive way, we can look towards architecture, we can look towards city planning and also how buildings are built in the past decades because they have taken aboard the inclusive approach. They do all the accommodations they can think of – for example, no stairs, ride towards those who have to take a wheelchair. Or it could be beneficial to people with a trolley or with something heavy that they have to carry.

So, thinking of this benefits everyone. And now imagine the internet being a public space, and how we can learn from city planning and architecture and interior design, that we are *accommodating those who need accommodation*. And that's what the inclusive approach is about. So, to sum this up, your research cannot be universal, because you cannot serve that, but it can be personalized and it can be also tailored to the needs of the audience you are serving.

Universal design is a design practice that is generally considered to be a design that has gone through all the design processes while hoping to take everyone into consideration. You just would have to design it in a way that everyone can use it. The *problem* with the approach of universal design is, though, that *you cannot really design for everyone*.

To design with 8 billion people in mind is strictly impossible: a design that is utopian or more academic or more a discourse subject rather than something that we can really and truly design. But you can do *inclusive design* as a part of design practices that strive for inclusion. The difference is that inclusive design is the umbrella above,

for example, accessible design because accessibility is an accommodation. It is checking boxes whether your design is truly accessible. And if it serves the purpose for your audiences. Inclusive design is the same umbrella. Universal design is more of a juxtaposition, but it's more battling against inclusive design because if you think of everyone, you think of no one.

And in this inclusive way, we can look towards architecture, we can look towards city planning and also how buildings are built in the past decades because they have taken aboard the inclusive approach. They do all the accommodations they can think of – for example, no stairs, ride towards those who have to take a wheelchair. Or it could be beneficial to people with a trolley or with something heavy that they have to carry.

So, thinking of this benefits everyone. And now imagine the internet being a public space, and how we can learn from city planning and architecture and interior design, that we are *accommodating those who need accommodation*. And that's what the inclusive approach is about. So, to sum this up, your research cannot be universal, because you cannot serve that, but it can be personalized and it can be also tailored to the needs of the audience you are serving.

For you, one of your biggest biases and issues as a designer if you're a visual designer or if you're working on a website or app that – you know – you're a stakeholder on the team, it's going to be the fact that you can actually  see what's on a screen, assuming that you're not blind, that you're actually reviewing visual designs.

And the things that I found that are the biggest challenges for visual design are the *semantics*. So, words make sense when you look at them or descriptions are aided with a visual cue; you know – confirmation messages visually colored or it flashes up and there's something that gives you a visual cue there, error messages the same thing. So, these kind of semantics of – you know –

that you understood an error message or you understood something are one of the things we just get used to. And then we forget what it might be like if you don't have the visual crutch. So, this example here is a quiz, and this is where we saw this, when we were optimizing this quiz, that  when we were looking at the accessibility of it, the problem with it – so we went through and we made it accessible, so you could

keyboard and tab through the the different choices – and then we tested it with a user. And we were like, oh – we totally didn't realize this. What was happening is that the correct answer was appearing to the left of the answer choice. And the problem was that when it announced the correct choice, even though it was accessible, it didn't say which one it was.

So, say Choice B was circled and then the correct answer was displayed over there, but it just didn't have this semantic of saying, "The correct answer is Choice B (blah blah blah blah blah)." So, very simple, but a good reminder of like, oh yeah – you know – reinforcing the fact that your visual bias adds context; that might not be there when it's read aloud or when it's navigated through an audible experience like a screen reader.

The second bucket for visual bias is the interaction; it's the little animations or little micro-interactions that are occurring on a screen are another source of – you know – it's like, "Well, I saw that, but a screen reader didn't." You know. So, being aware of that, as well as the third one, which is *place*. So, like the location on a screen or movement that occurs – some meaning from a state change.

Like a hover is a classic one – you hover on and off and it kind of tells you that it's a clickable element or it tells you that nothing's happening. Sometimes you click on stuff, play buttons or you click on elements on a screen that are loading like a button or something like that – nothing happens. And then you can kind of tell nothing's happening because if you have a little technical proficiency as a user, you can look down and see if the page is loading on your browser in the lower-left corner

or you can see that nothing happened – you push the button and nothing happens. Well, if you don't have that visual cue or if something is placed in an area of a screen that you have to kind of navigate back up to the top if you're using assistive technology, that's going to be a blocker. Right? So, visual bias I think is our worst enemy because  we're so familiar with it, we're so used to it   that we've forgotten that we are, so we have that crutch.

There's more than one bias, though. There's *mouse-heavy bias*. So, we've gotten used to the fact that we use mice all the time and as designers we require point and click a lot. So, it took me a while to realize how important this was. Many years ago when I was doing lots of usability – you know – kind of user studies and going out and talking to users, then when you're doing B2B studies (business-to-business studies), you usually run across

that one user who is the keyboard user,  and it's like "I don't use the mouse." Like, this woman is using this very important software for the company and sometimes she's the only user. And she's going through and just because of the speed that she needs to input, it's keyboard-driven. Now, we found this with many types of applications like that, so designing for keyboard accessibility for the heavy input user is just something  that you end up supporting.

It's one of these universal type of design approaches. And so, with accessibility, we're blocking users if we make things too mouse-dominant because then they're not able to use the keyboard. And without the keyboard, there's  usually not a focus state related to that. So, we'll talk more about focus states just like we've been talking about since they're so important.   Now, the other bias is the *color bias* – so we've talked about color blindness.

And for example, putting error messages only in red text. And if you recall the guideline there is to add a supporting element like another visual element to reinforce the color. Don't just use color alone basically. So, watch out for those three biases:  *visual bias, color bias and mouse bias*   because as a sighted designer or business person  or developer you're probably

going to be biased by those things. Now, in the design phase, some of the very basic accessibility things you should be nipping in the bud, in other words, stopping them before the train goes down the track are things like *typography*, so the size of your font; designing and defining that up front or making sure that that's documented in a style guide is really important. If it's not, then that's where a developer needs to be familiar with accessibility so they can stop it

at their stage of coding or a front-end web developer who's putting together a style sheet that will call those styles. So, *color contrast* is the other big classic, and I think if there's one skill that any good designer – and I'm talking visual designer – needs to learn, it's *high contrast* because that seems to be the big one from the dozens of designers that I've worked with over the years. It seems like they give me designs all the time that are low contrast. It's the gray on gray, as I like to joke.

Then *link visibility and target size* is the other one. This is all up front. So, before you even get to thinking about accessibility, you should be thinking about that. And then *labeling or label proximity* – so how close the label is to the element that you're trying to get the call to action on. Once you have those basics, then you can add *predictability and consistent navigation*;

things like the focus, focusability, and then the blocks of content being separated and distinct from each other.

Universal design is a design practice that is generally considered to be a design that has gone through all the design processes while hoping to take everyone into consideration. You just would have to design it in a way that everyone can use it. The *problem* with the approach of universal design is, though, that *you cannot really design for everyone*.

To design with 8 billion people in mind is strictly impossible: a design that is utopian or more academic or more a discourse subject rather than something that we can really and truly design. But you can do *inclusive design* as a part of design practices that strive for inclusion. The difference is that inclusive design is the umbrella above,

for example, accessible design because accessibility is an accommodation. It is checking boxes whether your design is truly accessible. And if it serves the purpose for your audiences. Inclusive design is the same umbrella. Universal design is more of a juxtaposition, but it's more battling against inclusive design because if you think of everyone, you think of no one.

And in this inclusive way, we can look towards architecture, we can look towards city planning and also how buildings are built in the past decades because they have taken aboard the inclusive approach. They do all the accommodations they can think of – for example, no stairs, ride towards those who have to take a wheelchair. Or it could be beneficial to people with a trolley or with something heavy that they have to carry.

So, thinking of this benefits everyone. And now imagine the internet being a public space, and how we can learn from city planning and architecture and interior design, that we are *accommodating those who need accommodation*. And that's what the inclusive approach is about. So, to sum this up, your research cannot be universal, because you cannot serve that, but it can be personalized and it can be also tailored to the needs of the audience you are serving.

Think broadly. Think in systems. Think about the company, society, the world. What I often tell designers what they need to do is to think broadly about the bigger images, they need to move up in the company. And they say, "Well, designers don't move up in a company." And I say, "Well, why not?" And I say, "Engineers move up."

And they say, "Well, they go and get an MBA." And I say, "Well, yeah; that's not a bad idea; why don't you?" The MBA degree isn't necessary. But the *knowledge*  that you get from that degree is necessary. You can get it without going to school and getting an  MBA, but it means you have to learn statistics, finance, accounting, marketing, supply chain,

administration. You have to learn the fundamentals of business so that you can talk about it, understand what's important. And design is not the most important part of what the company is doing. Actually, there is no single part of the company that's the most important part. It's a *system*. You all have to be in it together. And when I was a vice president, when I was an executive, I looked for the people who *didn't* put the work they were doing first,

who put what was *best for the company* first, who might very well say, "I just developed this  really important way of doing something, but we shouldn't be using it yet, because at this point it would not be helpful." That's what I look for – for somebody who takes the broad, big-picture view. And most designers fail at that. Most designers are so in love with their designs, they think that's all there is to it. And they're wrong. That's only a small part. So, think *broadly*, think *in systems*,

think about the *company*, *society*, *the world*.

User research is a crucial part of the design process. It helps to bridge the gap between what we think users need and what users actually need. User research is a systematic process of gathering and analyzing information about the target audience or users of a product, service or system. Researchers use a variety of methods to understand users, including surveys, interviews, observational studies, usability testing, contextual inquiry, card sorting and tree testing, eye tracking

studies, A-B testing, ethnographic research and diary studies. By doing user research from the start, we get a much better product, a product that is useful and sells better. In the product development cycle, at each stage, you’ll different answers from user research. Let's go through the main points. What should we build? Before you even begin to design you need to validate your product idea. Will my users need this? Will they want to use it? If not this, what else should we build?

To answer these basic questions, you need to understand your users everyday lives, their motivations, habits, and environment. That way your design a product relevant to them. The best methods for this stage are qualitative interviews and observations. Your visit users at their homes at work, wherever you plan for them to use your product. Sometimes this stage reveals opportunities no one in the design team would ever have imagined. How should we build this further in the design process?

You will test the usability of your design. Is it easy to use and what can you do to improve it? Is it intuitive or do people struggle to achieve basic tasks? At this stage you'll get to observe people using your product, even if it is still a crude prototype. Start doing this early so your users don't get distracted by the esthetics. Focus on functionality and usability. Did we succeed? Finally, after the product is released, you can evaluate the impact of the design.

How much does it improve the efficiency of your users work? How well does the product sell? Do people like to use it? As you can see, user research is something that design teams must do all the time to create useful, usable and delightful products.