Inclusive Design and Accessibility: What’s the difference?

Inclusive Design and Accessibility are closely related, and within the tech industry we sometimes use these terms side by side. Both terms are becoming more popular in recent years (with good reason!), but the distinction between the two can be a little confusing. Although they’re different concepts, they often lead down the same path: inclusive design leads to accessible outcomes.

Let’s discuss the differences between the two, and why they’re a strategic imperative for your business.

What’s the difference between Inclusive Design and Accessibility?

Accessibility is about outcomes. Simply put, accessibility means that something is designed in such a way that it can be used by people regardless of their abilities or disabilities. It means that you have specific things in place that make it so that people with disabilities can access your app effectively. Often, that means that you’re following specific government or industry guidelines, like making sure your website follows standards set out by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Sometimes this is done to meet legal or compliance requirements, but other times it’s done because a company’s user base requires it for specific reasons.

Inclusive design is more about the process. It’s a way of designing software to make sure that you’re thinking about all different types of people who use the software, and you’re thinking about their different needs and circumstances. Inclusive design is about really deeply understanding the people who use the product, and understanding the ways that they need it to work so they can use it successfully. It’s about empathy. Kind of paradoxically, a big factor in inclusive design is actually exclusion. In other words, in order to design to include people, you have to consider all the ways software is designed to exclude people.

How Inclusive Design and Accessibility work together

Inclusive design and accessibility go hand in hand with each other. Often, Inclusive Design processes lead directly to accessible design. When you’re really focused on understanding people who use the product, you’ll often find that the product must be accessible in order to meet their needs. Both accessibility and inclusive design are about thinking about the ways that people intersect with tech.

What that looks like in practice is that any time you’re making decisions about your product, inclusivity is at the top of your mind. You’re thinking about all the different people who use the product, how they use it, what they want to get out of it. You’re thinking broadly about lots of different demographic groups, and you’re also considering the different circumstances that they need for your product. For example, some people using the product might be Deaf, but others might be Hearing people who left their headphones at home and are using your app in a library. Both of those people need accommodations within the app for any audio components, even though they need those accommodations for totally different reasons. Inclusive design helps you make sure you have features to support both of these people, and accessibility helps you make sure you specifically meet the needs of the Deaf user by following accessibility standards.

Some companies divorce accessibility from inclusive design, but I don’t recommend it. This happens when companies only focus on completing an accessibility checklist once, instead of spending time empathizing with users to understand their needs. You can check off accessibility checklists, but a more holistic approach is working to achieve both inclusivity and accessibility. This allows you to really understand your users and meet their needs.

Why businesses need Inclusive Design and Accessibility

First and foremost, caring about other people is the right thing to do, and everyone should be able to navigate the world on their own terms. Tech is a huge part of our world, and everyone should be able to use it.

Even if you aren’t convinced that it’s the right thing to do, the business case for it should be a huge motivating factor. It’s important to remember that if you’re not working to be inclusive, you are almost certainly being exclusive. There are paying customers out there who want to use your app but can’t, because it doesn’t work for people who are hard of hearing, who have low vision, who have physical limitations, etc. Or it could be that they have some type of circumstantial limitation that you haven’t thought about: maybe they want to use the app in low light, in a quiet space where they can’t use audio cues, while their hands are full or they broke their hand recently. You’re really shrinking your potential customer base by not thinking of these people. This is an unforced error on the part of businesses.

Consumers these days are being more vocal about their needs, and putting a lot more pressure on companies to be inclusive and accessible. In some cases, companies like Domino’s have even been sued for not meeting ADA requirements. In other cases, brands are losing customers by not being inclusive… for example, some fashion brands have taken a financial hit after releasing offensive apparel. The pressure is on to be more inclusive and accessible, and I don’t think this is a bad thing.

Inclusive design and accessibility are not necessarily difficult to design around or implement. Sure, it can take a little bit of extra time to consider them. But that extra time is well worth it when you consider that it means your product is more inclusive. And as your brand grows, you’ll almost certainly have to do it anyway whether it’s to expand your target market or to meet legal requirements. Doing it right from the beginning is ultimately going to save you time and money later on, decrease risk, and just make it better for everyone.

How businesses can incorporate Inclusive Design and Accessibility

Anybody interested in inclusive design has to start with empathy. First and foremost, you should be talking to a diverse set of people who use your software, and you should try to really understand their experiences and circumstances. This includes talking to people with disabilities, and observing how they interact with their environment. Ask a lot of questions! If for some reason you can’t talk to people, read or watch as much as you can about their experiences in the world, whether that’s through books, articles, or documentaries. Curiosity about people is a big factor in success. To make those inclusive designs truly accessible, there are tons of guidelines and checklists to follow to meet all the specifications. And don’t forget to audit and test often to make sure you maintain accessibility going forward. This isn’t really a one and done kind of thing.

It really boils down to making tech that everyone can use your tech. This means that everyone’s voices need to be heard. When we’re having conversations about how digital experiences and customer experiences will function, we’ve got to get better at making sure we’re empathizing with people who use the product. Part of it is hiring diverse teams, to make sure that we aren’t designing in a vacuum. Part of it is really talking to diverse groups of people who use the product, through research or customer interviews. And another part of it is just taking the time to do it.

There are 7.5 billion people on this planet and counting. It’s tough… maybe impossible… to be inclusive of every single one of those people. We’re not always going to get it right every time, and as tech evolves there are going to be a lot of new challenges we’ll need to face. But we’ve got to start somewhere, and even if that means just making one small change in your app to be more inclusive today, that’s better than nothing. Every day is a new opportunity to include more people.

Resources for Inclusive Design and Accessibility

There are many great resources available for anyone interested in inclusive design and accessibility.

The A11y Project has fantastic blog posts, articles, book recommendations, and online tools to help you learn more about accessibility. They also have an excellent online checklist that is one of my favorite accessibility tools. It lists all the accessibility requirements you need to meet, along with an explanation of each.

Reading is an excellent way to sharpen your inclusive design skills. Some of my favorite books on this topic are:

• Mismatch by Kat Holmes
• Technically Wrong by Sarah Wachter Boettcher

Any time that you can learn about people who are different than you can help you to be more inclusive. Take the time to learn about the experiences of people who may be different than you. This includes reading or watching movies about:

• people who have disabilities
• people of a different race
• people with different gender identities
• people in the LGBTQ community
• people from different socioeconomic backgrounds
• people with different religious beliefs
• people who are neurodivergent
• people with different living situations
• people with allergies
• people from different ethnicities or cultures.

The human experience is so vast and expansive! Reading is a great way to strengthen your empathy muscles, which is so foundational to inclusive design.