What is Inclusive Design? Inclusive vs Accessible Design

Table Of Content

• Immersive Experience Design: Expert Insights and Techniques
• Principles of Universal Design (
• Inclusive process and tools
• Inclusive Design vs Universal Design vs Design For All vs Accessibility: Related but Distinct Concepts
• What is the difference between inclusive design and universal design?
• What is the difference between accessible design and inclusive design?
• Hire a diverse team
• Understanding the basics

Microsoft's Inclusive Design Toolkit illustrates how to apply inclusive design to support many different goals and outcomes. For example, when designing for inclusivity, it's important to consider the needs of a user who is blind but also someone who might have just had laser eye surgery or is trying to read something on their phone on a sunny day. If you’re not sure whether the materials you’re creating are accessible, you can consult the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.

Immersive Experience Design: Expert Insights and Techniques

But the most interesting and useful takeaway from Microsoft’s inclusive design principles is the idea of solving for one but extending to many. This idea proposes that the constraints of designing for people with disabilities benefits all users in the end. All people share common experiences—they all have motivations and build relationships—and those commonalities can serve as the foundation for creating universally beneficial designs. Inclusive design looks at the wide range of human diversity and aims to fulfill as many user needs as possible. Accessible design focuses on the needs of people with disabilities and how to understand and find solutions to meet those needs. The products created from this process will not only serve those with disabilities but also create better experiences for everyone.

Principles of Universal Design (

Instead, ask critical questions during the early stages of your design process. In your UX research, you can uncover potential barriers that may affect your users. You should consider the accessibility of content for individuals who may have disabilities, limited vision, or use assistive technologies. For instance, think about how users on the autism spectrum might not recognize features in your design because of how you set out the elements.

Inclusive process and tools

They bring out the best in human-centered design to grant equal access across the board. Making your design work accessible to people from all backgrounds, ability levels, and other imaginable categories ensures a strong brand identity as well. When design focuses on inclusivity, it proves it hasn’t let the biases of a bygone era make it visually impaired.

It considers language, culture, age, gender, ethnicity, ability and other types of differences in people. So… what is a proven and pain-free way to well-executed accessibility? If you’ve ever tried to optimize your site or app for accessibility, you’ll know it can be a complex and intimidating task… and it can therefore be very tempting to leave it until last or, worse still, avoid it altogether.

However, some general ways to ensure you're being cognitively inclusive are to not overcrowd your product pages with information, and to write content for a grade 7 reading level, avoiding jargon and complex terminology. The initial Band-Aid example highlights a great case of how a company could and should consider a range of individuals and their ethnic backgrounds. Not only should the products we create consider cultural diversity, but so should the media we consume, from movies to commercials to marketing materials. If the goal is to resonate with your audience, remember that your audience doesn't fit one specific group, and you'll need to be intentional about how to be inclusive.

What is the difference between accessible design and inclusive design?

The bottom segment of the pyramid represents those with no difficulties, and the severity of difficulties increases up the pyramid. To continue along the sex/gender thread, let’s look at how one dating app approaches gendered language. You might list all suitable answers to this question or you might allow users to type in their answer in an open text field (or some combination of these two). Be mindful of the options you make available for users to select and make sure they are in keeping with the information you’re actually asking for.

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That's why it's crucial to consider as many scenarios as possible and design systems and solutions that work for everyone. Humans are complex, and diversity itself is not something with a direct definition. But there is no one type of person, so in using this icon, I would be excluding any person (including myself) who doesn’t look like it. With this in mind, I might consider a different person or multiple people… or use another visualization technique entirely.

Around the world, there are many variations of surnames; however, Last Name form fields don’t always accommodate them. Restrictions like character limits, no hyphens, or restrictions on names that are spelled the same as inappropriate English words can make some people feel excluded. When designing websites, there are some well-known standards and guidelines you can follow to ensure that you’re not excluding users on the basis of ability—the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a great place to start. Contact with users becomes even more necessary when designing for user groups we don’t know. Design and accessibility expert Kat Holmes talks about designing with users as an essential part of the process. If we want to make sure that the experience we design delivers value to everyone who might benefit from it, we need to design with excluded communities rather than for them.

As designers, we need to plan and design for accessibility in UX projects. We have the responsibilities, not only to our profession but also to our users and society, to design accessible digital solutions. One simple method of including accessibility in our UX projects is to assign a disability to one of the personas.

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For websites and the built environment, the target population is generally the whole population, in which case all three approaches have an equivalent meaning. Failure to correctly understand people can result in products that cause unnecessary frustration and exclusion, which reduces commercial success because of increased returns and customer support. Accents trigger certain associations with race, culture, socioeconomic status, etc. While we cannot escape this, it’s up to us to choose to iterate on existing stereotypes or not.

User diversity covers variation in capabilities, needs and aspirations. When you understand the needs of your users, you can come up with some delightful ways to satisfy those needs. For example, Pinterest, an image-sharing app, released a new feature which allowed users to filter based on some nontraditional options  — for example, by hair pattern  (e.g., protective, curly, straight). Though this pattern may seem like a minor addition, it is empathetic to Pinterest’s diverse user base and created an inclusive browsing experience. Finally, Microsoft is a classic example of a company that strives to design according to principles driven by inclusivity (and especially accessibility). Their inclusive design toolkit includes extensive resources on how to design inclusively—including detailed instructions on how to use persona spectrums in your design work.