Inclusive design is about so much more than designing for people with disability. You never know the exact context of how a user interacts with your product.
As highlighted in this example, the reasons a person could be using your product with only one arm could vary from permanent injury, a temporary condition, to a new parent who only has one arm free while nursing a newborn.
Everyone is different, and we all have a role to play in creating inclusive (digital) experiences.
These talks and videos provide the foundations for what makes accessible and inclusive design, and will help you see the world through another’s eyes.
UX Mastery: Everyone is Different!
Duration: 3:56
Produced by us in partnership with the team from Accessibility Bytes (http://a11ybytes.org) for Global Accessibility Awareness Day, this video is an introduction to accessibility for creators of digital experiences.
More: http://globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/
Jinsop Lee: Design for All 5 Senses
Duration: 9:03
Good design looks great, yes — but why shouldn’t it also feel great, smell great and sound great? Designer Jinsop Lee shares his theory of 5-sense design, with a handy graph and examples. His hope: to inspire you to notice great multisensory experiences.
Michael Nesmith: Why We Need Universal Design
Duration: 10:29
Michael is a deaf and native American Sign Language speaker working as a creative designer for Amazon. Throughout his career, Michael’s visual/conceptual way of thinking and problem solving have served him both as an asset and a challenge. He finds solutions around his disability through Universal Design.
Microsoft: Inclusive Design Sprint: Team Xbox
Duration: 4:55
In an intensive one-week design sprint, team Xbox came together to re-imagine the possibilities in social gaming through the lens of inclusive design.
More: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/inclusive
Derek Featherstone: Accessibility is a Design Tool
Duration: 29:32
Designing for extreme use cases—outliers—results in a design process that leads to greater success in developing products that are more easily used by everyone. By systematically factoring these extremes into our designs we spark creativity and behaviours that encourage divergent thinking and help to ensure that what we create can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities.
More: https://simplyaccessible.com/articles/
Elle Waters: Lean Accessibility – Building inclusive design into your agile workflow
Duration: 53:42
Accessibility has a brand problem. But just as agile-minded thinking can transform your company’s culture, accessibility integration can actually serve as a catalyst for innovation and continuous improvement within your agile process. Learn how agile and accessibility make excellent partners in building a lean, cost-effective practice of user-centered, value-based design and development.
Sara Wachter Boettcher: Design for Real life at Delight Conference
Duration: 42:18
We can’t always predict who will use our products, or what emotional state they’ll be in when they do. But we have the power—and the responsibility—to build compassion into every aspect of our products, and to advocate for experiences that support more of our users, more of the time. Sara will share principles and practical approaches from Design for Real Life, her new book with coauthor Eric Meyer.
More: http://delight.us/sara-wachter-boettcher-design-for-real-life/
Neil Harbisson: I listen to colour
Duration: 9:35
Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind, but these days a device attached to his head turns color into audible frequencies. Instead of seeing a world in grayscale, Harbisson can hear a symphony of color — and yes, even listen to faces and paintings.
Elise Roy: When we design for disability, we all benefit
Duration: 13:17
“I believe that losing my hearing was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received,” says Elise Roy. As a disability rights lawyer and design thinker, she knows that being Deaf gives her a unique way of experiencing and reframing the world — a perspective that could solve some of our largest problems. As she says: “When we design for disability first, you often stumble upon solutions that are better than those when we design for the norm.”
Kevin Shaw: Design the Inclusive Experience
Duration: 19:00
Kevin Shaw’s talk is structured around the reality that a person isn’t disabled, rather the environment is. Kevin talks about his visual impairment and the work he has been doing with Zagga entertainment while emphasizing on the purpose of inclusive technology. Kevin tells the story of how he developed this service and discuss how tomorrow’s leaders can create inclusive experiences in media and other disciplines.
Ron McCallum: How technology allowed me to read
Duration: 15:44
Months after he was born, in 1948, Ron McCallum became blind. In this charming, moving talk, he shows how he reads — and celebrates the progression of clever tools and adaptive computer technologies that make it possible. With their help, and the help of volunteers, he’s become a lawyer, an academic, and, most of all, a voracious reader. Welcome to the blind reading revolution.
David Eagleman: Can we create new senses for humans?
Duration: 20:34
As humans, we can perceive less than a ten-trillionth of all light waves. “Our experience of reality,” says neuroscientist David Eagleman, “is constrained by our biology.” He wants to change that. His research into our brain processes has led him to create new interfaces — such as a sensory vest — to take in previously unseen information about the world around us.
Chieko Asakawa: How new technology helps blind people explore the world
Duration: 9:29
How can technology help improve our quality of life? How can we navigate the world without using the sense of vision? Inventor and IBM Fellow Chieko Asakawa, who’s been blind since the age of fourteen, is working on answering these questions. In a charming demo, she shows off some new technology that’s helping blind people explore the world ever more independently … because, she suggests, when we design for greater accessibility, everyone benefits.
