Principles of inclusive design
We want our designs to work for as many people as possible. This is a core principle of UX: designing for inclusion.
"Accessibility" refers to a user's ability to access a service, website, space, or product. Accessibility is a critical component of inclusive design, and often focuses on people with disabilities who might be using assistive technology.
Some core principles:
- Our designs should reflect and accommodate the full range of human experience.
- Accessible design benefits everyone, since everyone can gain and lose abilities over the course of their day as well as their lifetime. Curb cuts, for example, benefit wheelchair users as well as people rolling shopping carts.
- Good designs allow for a diversity of ways for people to participate (e.g. tactically, visually).
- Disability is context dependent and refers to a mismatch between a person and a thing they are interacting with.
Checking for accessibility
- Accessibility Insights for easily spotting accessibility issues in the browser
- Color contrast checker by WebAIM to make sure your selected foreground and background colors create enough contrast
- University of Arizona Website Accessibility for the University’s web accessibility guidelines, created by Disability Resources
- Axe-core for tools to find accessibility issues during development
Diving deeper
- Microsoft Inclusive Design includes principles, videos, and a downloadable toolkit of resources
- Accessibility for Teams government guide for embedding accessibility and inclusive design practices into your team's workflow
- Giving a damn about accessibility a candid and practical handbook for designers
- Inclusive and Accessible Design Series of presentations by the University of Arizona's Disability Resources and University Libraries
- Tips for Making Better Forms on how to make forms inclusive, particularly when asking for name, gender, or ethnicity
- A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experiences (book)
- Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design (book)
- Design for Real Life (book)