What Is Inclusive and Accessible Design?

Geoff Cook
Geoff Cook Member (Full) Posts: 86
in Built Environment - Access to Buildings and Urban Spaces

What Is Inclusive and Accessible Design?

Inclusive design is about making something usable by everyone, regardless of background, ability, or situation. Accessible design focuses specifically on making sure people with disabilities can use it.

Think of it like this:

  • Inclusive design is like building a house for everyone—big families, single people, and people in wheelchairs. You make sure there's enough space, ramps for easy access, and maybe even a garden everyone can enjoy.
  • Accessible design ensures that the house has features specifically for people with disabilities, such as wider doorways, lower countertops, and grab bars in the bathroom.

They're both important! Accessible design is a key part of inclusive design, but inclusive design goes further to consider things like age, culture, and economic background."

Key takeaways:

  • Inclusive design: For everyone, diverse needs are considered.
  • Accessible design: Specifically for people with disabilities.
  • They work together: Accessible design is a crucial part of inclusive design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE83Qn-PTGA

This video applies to technology but also has carryover into physical species.

Comments

  • Sarah Tuberty
    Sarah Tuberty Posts: 38

    I really this video's commentary of on the differences between perspective taking and perspective getting. Perspective taking is the hypothetical exercise when a person (who does not belong to the X community) imagines what it is like to be a person in the X community. Such as a non-limb different person imagining how a limb different person would interact with the content. This is unhelpful, because even when we are imagining, our imagination is fraught with bias based on our own experiences. This does not provide helpful information for the designers.

    Rather, we should be getting the perspectives of people who actually live with this experience, and she notes qualitative research! What a great video secretly promoting the need for Open Inclusion!

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