Exclusive Design ~ Vasilis van Gemert - Zeijls/web-design-1920 GitHub Wiki

What if we design websites exclusively for people with disabilities?

I created these principles when I was studying a set of inclusive design principles. It turned out that the exact opposite of these inclusive principles was the perfect starting point for my research.➀1

The exclusive design principles are:

1. Study situation I used this principle because I wonder if we understand the different contexts of people with disabilities well enough? My assumption is that we don’t. So in order to become a specialist inclusive designer I studied a few individual situations of people with different disabilities.

2. Ignore conventions The original inclusive principle says that you should use conventions that people know. But I couldn’t help but wonder: Do the current web design conventions work for people with disabilities? Simply said, the current conventions are designed by, and thus for, designers. Not all these conventions work for non-designers. If we want to include non-designers, and especially people with disabilities, we should reconsider these conventions if needed, after we studied their situations.

3. Prioritise identity Observing the situation of people with disabilities, and designing things especially for them is of course a good first step. But what if we let people with disabilities play an active role in the design process? Next to designing for people I have also designed with people, combining the insights and ideas of excluded people with the skills and knowledge of me as a webdesigner.

4. Add nonsense One of my main concerns is how can we lift accessible web design beyond the functional? I have tried to answer this question by allowing the people I worked with, and myself, to add nonsense, in order to try and come up with ideas that live on a higher conceptual level than the obvious. This has resulted in some interesting — and fun — new ideas and projects.

Why? For me the most important reason we should be designing inclusive websites is because we can. And the effects are big. Creating inclusive websites enables people with disabilities to lead a more independent life. This should be more than enough reason in itself. But there are other pressing reasons why we need expertise in inclusive design.