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Can inclusive design return investment?
What inclusive design really is and should we really spend resources including minorities?
“Can you make the text bigger? Our colleague has to squint to read it.” — one of my first clients asked me. This was my first accessibility lesson.
A few years later, I got a chance to attend a course on Inclusive Design held by Antonio Grillo. “Awesome!” — thought I — “I always wanted to make something for the impaired. Maybe I can make a prosthesis!”
Don’t laugh, that’s what I thought inclusive design is. What I notice is that many people outside of design have this misconception too. Even in tech. For example, according to Baymard institute, 94% of the largest e-commerce sites are still not accessibility compliant.
The view on disability
We might hear the word “disability” when speaking about inclusive design. Disability is described in dictionaries as an issue related to health.
Does the “ability” mean a perfect health condition? Not at all. It’s just the fact that someone can do something.
Professor Grillo has shown me another way to think about abilities. It is the environment that forms the abilities. For example, if someone is not able to get to the second floor it is not because of health conditions but because of the environment that people designed that way.
Think about it. If an accessible environment is just something “nice to have”, why don’t we use ropes instead of stairs? Much cheaper and a healthy individual should be able to climb it. Besides, it is a great fitness exercise.
Sounds weird. Stairs include much more people than ropes. But what about … no, not wheelchairs. What about people with carriages, heavy bags, luggage, or bad knees? What about old, tired or sick people? They don’t have health-related permanent disabilities, but their abilities are still limited by the environment.
Inclusive design approach is one that perceives disability as a mismatch between our needs and the design features of a product, built environment, system or service. —…
