Inclusive design

The existing lack of an inclusively-designed environment for all people may be the greatest failure of designers, and simultaneously, the greatest opportunity to affect positive change in the world. Inclusive design, also known as universal design, is design that takes all people into account, including "extreme users." Extreme users typically have physical or cognitive differences or limitations that the majority of design does not account for. These users tend to make up a small percentage of users, and have needs that are often not considered in profit-centric businesses. It can be very expensive to revamp an existing design to meet the needs of extreme users, and design standards are only starting to catch up. For web design, inclusive design is better known as accessible design, and has made considerable advances in the last decade or so as a result of government regulations and lawsuits, most notable a National Federation of the Blind's 2010 complaint against Penn State University which has since led to massive infrastructure and policy overhauls.

An obvious example of inclusive design in the built environment are building codes that require the inclusion of wheelchair ramps, minimum dimensions for doors and hallways, ceiling heights, fire escapes, railings, etc. On the web, ARIA Roles in the html help screen readers better understand web page content, along with the many other considerations encouraged by W3C Accessibility standards.

Universal access features are features everyone can use. For instance, have you ever watched TV or video with closed captions on? Have you read the transcript of a video or podcast rather than watch or listen because it takes too long? Have you ever chosen to walk up a wheelchair ramp because it allowed you to get around a slow-walking person? These options afford you more choice in how you engage with the designed world.

Dis/ability

The word disability has a controversial history. Generally speaking, it is related to people who have impairments, activity limitations, and social participation restrictions. Disability studies is an academic discipline that is concerned with the nature and meaning of disability as a social construction. It can also be referred to medically, or used by the disability community as a means of self-identifying. The Disability Rights Movement focuses on reducing social stigma and ensuring that disabled persons are afforded the same rights and opportunities as any other person. One of the most famous Disability Rights Activists, and the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college, is Helen Keller, born in Alabama on June 27th, 1880. She was an author, lecturer, and a principle fundraiser for The American Foundation for the Blind. More than a century after Keller was born, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted on July 26, 1990. The ADA, in conjunction with other legislation, provides a wide breadth of protections and accommodations for public transportation, housing, communication, and other public services.

One way to think of ability is as a fluid state of being. An "able-bodied" person can open a door simply by extending their arm and pulling on a handle. A person who requires the use a wheelchair may have a harder time with the same task. However, if you were to give the same able-bodied person a baby to hold and a bag of groceries, opening the door using hands has now become all but impossible—a temporary impairment that has design implications. An affordance that exists for one person does not necessarily exist for another. A potential consequence of labeling someone as disabled is the affliction of learned helplessness, a process by which peers or those with authority convince a person that they are unable to overcome an obstacle, and that trying is pointless.

The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.

– Helen Keller

However, human beings have potential for incredible accomplishment, regardless of whether they have a disability or not. The Inuit travel enormous distances over seemingly featureless landscapes with advanced navigation techniques that help them find their way; some of the blind have taught themselves echolocation to sense the world, and amputees routinely complete world championship triathlons with the aid of advanced prosthetics, a feat most people who still have all of their limbs accounted for could not accomplish. Continued understanding of natural systems and technological advancements will enable people to do things in a few years that are just not possible to do today. It seems that design and the future of human ability are intrinsically-linked phenomenon.

Empathy as a design tool

The emergence of empathy strategies for designers has changed the way products and the built environment are created. Achieving empathy means that a designer would approximate the same user experience as one of their users by deliberately simulating physical, cognitive, and environmental constraints. For user-experience designers, there are a variety of digital tools including graphics software that simulates what colors would look like if you were colorblind, javascript libraries that simulate dyslexia, visual overlays that obscure parts of a computer screen to simulate visual impairments, and many others.