This week focussed on inclusive and accessible design, and while I’ve considered this before, I think I’ve looked at this through the ideas of visual accessibility standards such as contrasts, so this time wanted to consider the concept of inclusive design and why it is important in design on a conceptional level.
Since last semester, I’ve been intermittently reading Mike Monteiro’s “Ruined by Design”, a book which discusses the ethical side of UX design and brings up some really interesting points about inclusive design.
The start of this comes from the idea that design, being something that is informed by the views and ideas of the users you’re designing for, is inherently a political act. By the very basic idea that you are identifying a group of people to create something for, you are also deciding to exclude a group of people from your creation. This at a surface level is not a bad thing, design needs to be specific to it’s users, I’m not saying a software designed to be used by builders is bad because non builders struggle to use it. However if the exclusion of users goes beyond a professional level and excludes due to a users personal or social identity, then there are issues.
When I say that design is a political act I’m not trying to make some kind of grand, earth shattering statement which changes the idea of what design is; there’s is a lot of things we do in life which are “political” but which would rarely consider to be “political”. The readiness of information in this age means that merely choosing one shop over another could be seen as “political”. We have access to information about whether a company funds a certain other group and whether that has an effect on our political landscape; the internet has made almost everything “political”. Now, do we have to consider the political outcome of every action we take or shop we buy something from? – No, we’d go mad. However, should we consider the political outcome of our design decisions; the decisions which are choices in our careers; choices in a large part of our identity and the thing we do everyday? – Yes, it’s our responsibility because we are responsible for design.
So why does design being political matter if everything is political? Does the common denominator of “is political” mean really nothing is political? – It matters to us, because we are part of design. If we were to break design down into it’s essential aspects, I’d think “the designer”, “the user”, and “accessibility/universality/inclusivity” would be in those aspects. Each of these are connected in way which creates a political stance around any piece of design. [For the sake of ease, I’m going to use the word universal to represent “accessibility/ universality/ inclusivity” for the rest of this blog.] The general idea of universal design is that it is design that can be used by anyone regardless of background or ability, this can be accomplished through the base design, or settings that allow for more accessibility options. However, universal design really extends beyond the base idea of visual accessibility and considers content and design trends too. For example, a school enrolment website might ask for the name of the pupils mother and father, but this marginalises those with same sex parents, or those with one parent. An example of universal design within the lens of design trends would be having layouts that only work for left to right read text, without considering culture that read right to left. What I’m trying to show here is that design can really easily marginalise and exclude certain groups. We need to be thinking beyond just the idea colour contrast and consider how design works for certain groups of people. So how does this make design a political act? – By not creating design which is universal we’re saying that our work is not for a certain group of people, and that is something we’ve done. We’ve decided, purposefully or not, to exclude a certain demographic of people.
Now that’s not to say that if you make a non universal design choice you’ve done something bad (unless you did it on purpose). Design is an iterative process, and we don’t get it right first time. As long as you recognise the mistake and correct it, that’s fine. This then makes it our responsibility to make universality part of user testing, to go beyond just the core demographic and consider everyone who may use it on a background level.
What I’m trying to say through all of this is that “accessibility/universality/inclusivity” cannot just be the thing we check a the end, but has to be at the forefront, guiding every design decision. To say a certain group of users are edge cases is to say that they don’t matter, that you, as a designer, have decided they are not as valuable as others. To say you cannot make your work universal or that a non universal design is good enough is morally wrong as you are actively deciding to exclude people from what you create. So to sum up, why does design need to be inclusive? Because to not consider inclusivity is decide certain people matter more than others.