Anyone may create material and goods that immediately have a worldwide audience thanks to the Internet and the developing metaverse. With that authority comes the obligation to make sure that the products respect the various social identities of their broad global audience.
When using products and technology, people assume that a team of specialists has put checks and balances in place to make sure the item was created with them in mind. People anticipate that their experiences will take into consideration their language, age, size, disability, race, and other social characteristics that are relevant to the product.
UX, accessibility, and inclusion
The purpose of UX design is to produce the best possible user experiences. In the past, UX innovators and thought leaders have not placed a strong emphasis on designing for a wide variety of user identities. Therefore, inclusive design principles receive little to no attention while teaching UX design.
With the help of accessible UX design, content and features may be accessed and utilized by anyone, regardless of whether they have permanent, temporary, or situational impairments in their hearing, movement, visual, speech, or cognitive capacities. Accessibility is a component of inclusive design because disability is simply one part of identity.
The alienation of any social identity relevant to the product—disability, race/ethnicity, gender, skin color, age, size, sexual orientation, etc.—is minimized via inclusive UX design. Designing with inclusivity is taking the necessary precautions to guarantee that designs meet the requirements and expectations of the wide spectrum of consumers the product serves.
Why is inclusion important?
Unconsidered groups will have an alienating experience when a design fails to take into account a diverse audience. Just a few instances are shown below:
Gender stereotypes
The users’ interaction with a brand or product is frequently initiated by the imagery used in marketing and commercials. It perpetuates gender roles in society to present two men for the position of a software engineer and a woman for the position of receptionist.
Accessibility barriers
When accessibility is an afterthought, businesses often resort to using accessibility overlays as a fallback plan. That little accessibility button in the bottom-right corner, it’s an accessibility overlay — a third-party tool that is supposed to improve accessibility. While it’s a noble attempt, a quick Internet search for “accessibility overlays” reveals how they are “deceptive,” “problematic,” and “can make access worse.”
Corporate cultural appropriation
Companies sometimes try to present themselves as being inclusive by designing products to celebrate diverse identities. Walmart’s Celebration Edition ice cream is a perfect example of this anti-pattern. They released a Juneteenth flavor to “Share and celebrate African-American culture, emancipation and enduring hope” and a Pride flavor as “A sweet celebration of pride and the freedom to enjoy together.” This is what happens when companies commercialize cultures and design for, and not with, the people whom they are trying to reach.
Inclusive UX Design – the need of the hour
As UX experts, we have the potential to empower people through our design decisions and encourage them to reach their goals. Additionally, they have the potential to alienate, offend, marginalize, misrepresent, and erect obstacles, none of which make for a positive user experience.
It is past time for UX thought leaders to normalize inclusive design as the cornerstone of UX work rather than only sometimes bringing it up as a niche subject.
Here is a list of resources for finding out how to build inclusive experiences since most UX education, business executives, and content producers frequently miss inclusive design. I’ll be updating this list so if you know of any other excellent inclusive UX tools, please let me know in the comments.
Questions to ask ourselves
- Does my design incorporate suggestions made by those who will use the design?
- Does my design make everyone it will contact feel welcome?
- Is there any cultural appropriation here?
- Does my design adapt to various environments and contexts of use?
- Does my design give users the option to tailor their experience to suit their needs?
- Does my design assist everyone, regardless of skill, in effectively achieving their goals?
- Does my design promote trust?
- Does my design honor and accommodate different identities?
- Who my design is rejecting here?
- What result is my design trying to get?
Disclaimer:
The images used in this blog post have been adopted from third-party source canva. However, the images have been customized to meet our requirements and therefore you are not allowed to copy them. If you wish to use the above image template you can click on https://bit.ly/3A5E9Oz
We would like to thank all the third-party sources that we have used in our blog posts, for their respective resources.
