Recently, I took a refresher course on inclusive digital design and I have to say: current design trends that lean into aesthetics like white text on image background and certain script-type fonts, creates a barrier for equal access to information. So, what does inclusive design truly entails, why is it pivotal for the modern world? This article explores the difference between inclusive design vs. accessible design, and offers practical tips to create digital experiences that cater to all.
Why Inclusive Design is Important
Inclusive design isn’t just a trend; it’s a fundamental approach that ensures digital platforms are usable by the widest range of people, regardless of their abilities or backgrounds. Here are a few reasons why it is essential:
- Promotes Equality: Inclusive design champions equal access to information and digital services, ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to participate in the digital world.
- Enhances User Experience: By considering diverse needs, inclusive design often results in more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, benefiting all users.
- Expands Market Reach: Designing for inclusivity broadens your audience base, allowing more people to engage with your product or service.
- Fosters Innovation: Addressing diverse challenges often sparks creativity and leads to innovative solutions that might not have been considered otherwise.
- Reflects Social Responsibility: Embracing inclusive design demonstrates a commitment to social responsibility and ethical practices.
Inclusive Design vs. Accessible Design
While inclusive design and accessible design are often used interchangeably, they are distinct concepts with unique focuses:
- Inclusive Design: This approach aims to create products that are usable by as many people as possible, without the need for adaptation. It considers a broad spectrum of human diversity, including abilities, language, culture, gender, and age.
- Accessible Design: Accessibility specifically addresses the needs of people with disabilities. It involves designing and developing digital content to be usable by individuals with a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, and cognitive impairments.
In essence, accessibility is a subset of inclusive design. Inclusive design encompasses a broader view of diversity and usability, while accessibility ensures that digital products meet specific standards for people with disabilities.
So, shouldn’t we strive for accessible design standards instead?
This is such as nuanced question. Accessibility focuses on outcomes – whether content and functionality are usable by people who have disabilities. Meanwhile, inclusive design focuses on the diversity of use cases to ensure users from all backgrounds, abilities and experiences can enjoy equal user experience. In short, accessibility is one of the outcomes of effective inclusive design process.
I love the aesthetic of my brand right now and it works for me – do I need to change it?
Inclusive digital design requires a thoughtful approach and commitment to understanding and addressing the diverse needs of users.
- Conduct user research: My first advice is always to look at who are your users and customers. Understand their lifestyle, demographic and sociographic and psychographic will go a long way to help you make your design decisions.
- Design for flexibility and customisation: This means providing options for users to customise their experience: features such as adjustable text size, colour contrast setting and alternative navigation methods. Fortunately, most web browsers look after this by default with the ability to change a webpage to read mode to offer better contrast. However, inclusive design principles should carry across to PDFs as well.
- Priotise clarity and simplicity: Clear and straightforward designs benefit everyone. Use plain language and consistent layouts to make your digital designs easy to understand and use.
Okay. I see your point. What are some practical steps I can do today to design more inclusively?
I can go on the whole day about things to do when creating inclusive designs. But as a minimum, here are four actionable tips to help you create inclusive designs:
- Ensure Sufficient Text Contrast: High text contrast improves readability for users with visual impairments and those in various lighting conditions. Use tools like the WebAIM Contrast Checker to ensure your text meets WCAG guidelines for contrast ratios. Aim for a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
- Use Descriptive Alt Text for Images: I’m always going on about alt text and that’s because Alt text provides descriptions of images for users who use screen readers, making content accessible to those with visual impairments. Read one of my older article about how to write an effective alt text.
- Provide text alternatives for multimedia content: use captions to videos and provide transcripts for audio content. YouTube now has automatic captioning. But make sure to review and edit the caption and transcripts for accuracy.
- Design responsive and mobile-friendly layouts: responsible design ensures that your digital products work well on all devices, including those with smaller screens or different input methods.
So, there you have it – the what, why and how of creating inclusive design. Don’t get caught up in the trends. I too, am guilty of some not-so-great design moments. But I have worked with and seen how exclusion in designs can impact the quality of life and knowledge transfer for certain groups of people. It’s something I will keep on top of mind.
Image source: kaboompics