What is the purpose of inclusive design?

Do you know about inclusive design? Have you ever heard of it?

Inclusive design has the ambitious and important task of making interfaces accessible to everyone without exception. This “everyone” includes people with a disability (for example: being deaf or being visually impaired etc.) There are 3 types of disabilities:

• Permanent disabilities: for example having only one two arms or being permanently blind,
• Temporary deficiencies: e.g. having a broken leg,
• Situational / contextual deficiencies: being pregnant.

But beware, impairment can also turn out to be material or structural.

Capabilities and user experience are not the same for someone who owns an iPhone 10 or a Lumia 550. It is in this technical gap that signs of exclusion appear, with the deprivation of certain very popular applications such as Instagram or Snapchat.

This is also revealed in terms of hardware: difference in screen qualities, reception, calculation speeds, etc.

Interfaces designed with an inclusive design approach are accessible equally by all users, including those with disabilities, in an equitable manner.

“Designing interfaces for web applications, mobile applications or inclusive software reveals a hitherto unparalleled empathy towards humans and all their conditions, and this also calls for the desire to take into account differences among users. “

An inclusive interface is similar whether used by a disabled person or not. It does not require any specific adaptation; it is the same for everyone.

An inclusive application takes into account all the dimensions of humans.

UI / UX are therefore the first dimensions to be impacted by this concept.

Do not confuse Accessible Design with Inclusive Design. Accessible Design is an attribute of a product focused on the motor or physical disabilities of people.

We are going to look at the principles of Inclusive Design in a following article.

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