Lessons in inclusive design: Don’t be a virtue signaller
Having designed websites for a disability advocacy org and an award-winning assistive technology database, I clearly am the authority on accessibility. That’s a joke, please don’t cancel me.
As I often do with these musings, I’d like to start off with a personal anecdote. Because I am a Leo. Growing up in Australia as a child of Chinese-Malaysian immigrants, I faced some marginalisation during my formative years.
My mum would often send me to school with delicious home-cooked meals, kept warm until lunchtime in a thermos. And then one day I brought radish cakes. The age-old smelly lunch faux pas—every Asian has experienced it. Peers were quick to cover their noses and liken the stench to farts (to be fair, they’re not wrong). I was too young to realise that the joke was actually on them, with their Kraft Singles and TipTop white bread.
Another time in New Zealand, a group of girls at a caravan park teased me by slanting their eyes, the original widescreen/Asian eyes joke. I chased them until they ran into a bus. Not a moving one—they literally ran and hid inside a parked bus to hide from the tiny angry 9-year-old.
For better or worse, the people who design the touchpoints of society determine who can participate and who’s left out. Often unwittingly.
If design is the source of mismatches and exclusion, can it also be the remedy? Yes. But it takes work.
Kat Holmes, Mismatch²
But I digress.
TLDR—I experienced ostracism from some areas of society due to my culture. And I’m sure that at some point in your lifetime, you’ve likely experienced some form of exclusion. Inclusion can shape your sense of identity in the world, and contributes to an improved quality of life. Now that companies are beginning to take accountability, not only is there significant business potential, but inclusive design also can have a profound psychological and emotional impact on users.
Here we go! Some of my favourite takeaways on inclusive design:
Don’t do it because it ‘feels good’
Whilst empathy is a crucial quality in UX design, sympathy and pity serve as a roadblock to inclusion. Treating inclusion as a benevolent mission can widen the gap between people.
Put aside your fear of getting it wrong
There’s a special place (in front of a moving bus?) for people advocating for inclusion who will, in the same breath, chastise you for saying something incorrectly. Ignore them, as long as your intentions are right. Inclusion is messy. Some solutions are not a one-size-fits-all. As is the case with design, there are multiple iterations, and new phases as you learn more about your users’ needs.
Be aware of your own biases
Time-poor designers (myself included) may use themselves as a framework on how a product should be designed. Ability bias is a common cognitive bias that refers to our tendency to design based on our own abilities. This results in a solution that is favoured by other users with similar abilities, but can exclude many others.
Tokenism is gross
This article on Medium provides a helpful visualisation of the levels of user participation in relation to various stages of co-design. Activities such as consulting and involvement (decision-making, but not agenda-setting) can be helpful for research insights, but if not prioritised, can fall into the checking-a-box category¹. Many users with disabilities have often opted out of co-design sessions, with the main reason being that they felt their voice was not heard.
Inclusive design is essential. 1 in 6 people in Australia live with a disability³, and no good experience excludes or marginalises users. Avoid tokenism like the plague, and consider how improving your product’s design can also increase economic growth and encourage business. To delight your inner child and simultaneously receive additional education, do some further reading on Susan Goltsman, pioneer of inclusive playground design.
Ultimately, inclusion only gets better with practice.
