Designing A More Inclusive World

Designing inclusively is no longer an option for companies. It is a business essential. Global populations are getting older, legislation is increasingly prohibitive of unnecessary exclusion and consumer attitudes are beginning to change. Exclusivity is out, inclusivity is in. Research communities the world over are responding to this change in design emphasis. Conferences such as the Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT) offer a forum for researchers from diverse and varied disciplines to bring their perspectives on inclusive design together. This book has been inspired by the second CWUAAT, held in Cambridge, England in March 2004. It contains chapters from an international group of leading researchers in this field. Contributions focus on the following topics: design issues for universal access and assistive technology; enabling computer access and new technologies; and, assistive technology and rehabilitation robotics. This series of conferences is aimed at a broad range of interests, with a general focus on the development of products and solutions. Numerous case studies are used to raise awareness of the challenges faced in developing truly inclusive products, along with examples of good practice for design for a more inclusive world.

What is inclusive design? It is simple. It means that your product has been created with the intention of being accessible to as many different users as possible. For a long time, the concept of accessibility has been limited in terms of only defining physical spaces. However, change is afoot: personal technology now plays a part in the everyday lives of most of us, and thus it is a responsibility for designers of apps, web pages, and more public-facing tech products to make them accessible to all. Our digital era brings progressive ideas and paradigm shifts – but they are only truly progressive if everybody can participate. In Inclusive Design for a Digital World, multiple crucial aspects of technological accessibility are confronted, followed by step-by-step solutions from User Experience Design professor and author Regine Gilbert. Think about every potential user who could be using your product. Could they be visually impaired? Have limited motor skills? Be deaf or hard of hearing? This book addresses a plethora of web accessibility issues that people with disabilities face. Your app might be blocking out an entire sector of the population without you ever intending or realizing it. For example, is your instructional text full of animated words and Emoji icons? This makes it difficult for a user with vision impairment to use an assistive reading device, such as a speech synthesizer, along with your app correctly. In Inclusive Design for a Digital World, Gilbert covers the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 requirements, emerging technologies such as VR and AR, best practices for web development, and more. As a creator in the modern digital era, your aim should be to make products that are inclusive of all people. Technology has, overall, increased connection and information equality around the world. To continue its impact, access and usability of such technology must be made a priority, and there is no better place to get started than Inclusive Design for a Digital World. What You’ll LearnThe moral, ethical, and high level legal reasons for accessible design Tools and best practices for user research and web developers The different types of designs for disabilities on various platforms Familiarize yourself with web compliance guidelines Test products and usability best practicesUnderstand past innovations and future opportunities for continued improvementWho This Book Is For Practitioners of product design, product development, content, and design can benefit from this book.

The way we experience the world is largely through the design of the places, products, communications, services and systems we encounter every day. Design determines how difficult or easy it is to achieve certain things - whether boarding a plane, taking a bath, cooking a meal, crossing the street or making a call, we all want a world that works ......

Diversity and Inclusion to build better products from the front lines at Google Establishing diverse and inclusive organizations is an economic imperative for every industry. Any business that isn’t reaching a diverse market is missing out on enormous revenue potential and the opportunity to build products that suit their users' core needs. The economic “why” has been firmly established, but what about the “how?” How can business leaders adapt to our ever-more-diverse world by capturing market share AND building more inclusive products for people of color, women and other underrepresented groups? The Product Inclusion Team at Google has developed strategies to do just that and Building For Everyone is the practical guide to following in their footsteps. This book makes publicly available for the first time the same inclusive design process used at Google to create user-centric award-winning and profitable products. Author and Head of Product Inclusion Annie Jean-Baptiste outlines what those practices look like in industries beyond tech with fascinating case studies. Readers will learn the key strategies and step-by-step processes for inclusive product design that limits risk and increases profitability. Discover the questions you should be asking about diversity and inclusion in your products for marketers, user researchers, product managers and more. Understand the research the Product Inclusion team drove to back up their practices Learn the “ABCs of Product Inclusion” to build inclusion into your organization’s culture Leverage the product inclusion suite of tools to get your organization building more inclusively and identifying new opportunities. Read case studies to see how product inclusion works across industries and learn what doesn't work. Building For Everyone will show you how to infuse your business processes with inclusive design. You’ll learn best practices for inclusion in product design, marketing, management, leadership and beyond, straight from the innovative Google Product Inclusion team.

How inclusive methods can build elegant design solutions that work for all. Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. Inclusive design methods—designing objects with rather than for excluded users—can create elegant solutions that work well and benefit all. Holmes tells stories of pioneers of inclusive design, many of whom were drawn to work on inclusion because of their own experiences of exclusion. A gamer and designer who depends on voice recognition shows Holmes his “Wall of Exclusion,” which displays dozens of game controllers that require two hands to operate; an architect shares her firsthand knowledge of how design can fail communities, gleaned from growing up in Detroit's housing projects; an astronomer who began to lose her eyesight adapts a technique called “sonification” so she can “listen” to the stars. Designing for inclusion is not a feel-good sideline. Holmes shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies. It can be a catalyst for creativity and a boost for the bottom line as a customer base expands. And each time we remedy a mismatched interaction, we create an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways.

An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival. What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world. This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.

The introduction to the 1st International Conference on Computers for Han- cappedPersons(Vienna,1989)byAMinTjoa(UniversityofVienna)andRoland Wagner(UniversityofLinz)?nishedwiththefollowingmissionstatementonthe “Future Direction on Computers for Handicapped Persons”: “The di?erent themes show that a lot of problems are solved by the usage of computer technology for helping handicapped persons, for instance for the blind and visually handicapped. A consequence of the discussed themes there are two directions which should be done in the next years. One direction is obvious. The tools must be improved and research and development work should be extended to all groups of handicapped (even if they are numerically not so large as for instancetheblindorvisuallyhandicappedpersons). Ontheothersideinthearea of social implications there is an increasing demand on social science studies on overall computer use among disabled persons. Because sources are in principle missing today about disabled persons work tasks, research in this ?eld must begin by trying to survey this aspect. Particular attention should be paid to the extent and character of computer use among the handicapped in work life. There are a lot of questions, which should be answered during the next years for reaching the aim of rehabilitation. ” Fifteen years later the 9th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (Paris, 2004) o?ered a comprehensive and deepened view on general awareness,special research and individual applications conce- ing disabled people and their participation in our society.

This proceedings book presents papers from the 10th Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology. The CWUAAT series of workshops have celebrated a long history of interdisciplinarity, including design disciplines, computer scientists, engineers, architects, ergonomists, ethnographers, ethicists, policymakers, practitioners, and user communities. This reflects the wider increasing realisation over the long duration of the series that design for inclusion is not limited to technology, engineering disciplines, and computer science but instead requires an interdisciplinary approach. The key to this is providing a platform upon which the different disciplines can engage and see each other’s antecedents, methods, and point of view. This proceedings book of the 10th CWUAAT conference presents papers in a variety of topics including Reconciling usability, accessibility, and inclusive design; Designing inclusive assistive and rehabilitation systems; Designing cognitive interaction with emerging technologies; Designing inclusive architecture; Data mining and visualising inclusion; Legislation, standards, and policy in inclusive design; Situational inclusive interfaces; and The historical perspective: 20 years of CWUAAT. CWUAAT has always aimed to be inclusive in the fields that it invites to the workshop. We must include social science, psychologies, anthropologies, economists, politics, governance, and business. This requirement is now energised by imminent new challenges arising from techno-social change. In particular, artificial intelligence, wireless technologies, and the Internet of Things generate a pressing need for more socially integrated projects with operational consequences on individuals in the built environment and at all levels of design and society. Business cases and urgent environmental issues such as sustainability and transportation should now be a focus point for inclusion in an increasingly challenging world. This proceedings book continues the goal of designing for inclusion, as set out by the CWUAAT when it first started.