Designing for Inclusion in Public Services: Insights for Leadership

Exclusion is a human experience. At one point or another, we’ve all experienced exclusion in our lives. Within government design systems, the problem of exclusion is no different. Every design choice made – from policy to public communications – creates inclusion or exclusion. That’s because government design teams can sometimes create and develop ideas based on their own lived experiences.

The Centre for Inclusive Design1 outlines that the relative cost of retrofitting a product or service to become inclusive “will increase significantly over time and can reach up to 10,000 times the cost of introducing inclusive design earlier on.”

Kat Holmes – former Principal Director of Inclusive Design at Microsoft – believes that acknowledging the role design plays in exclusion can pave a way forward.

“With respect to design, I started to think that recognizing exclusion is a skill we can build. It’s an actionable starting point for thinking in new ways about how well a design does or doesn’t meet a person’s needs or preferences.

“Once we learn how to recognize exclusion, we can begin to see where a product or experience that works well for some might have barriers for someone else. Recognizing exclusion sparks a new kind of creativity on how a solution can be better.”

Barriers to access can be either permanent, temporary, situational, or a combination of factors. For example: there are different cases where you might be restricted to completing tasks with one arm. Having only one arm is a permanent condition, having an arm in a cast is temporary, and holding a baby in one arm is situational.

Beyond physical factors, there are also socio-cultural differences that can impact a person’s lived experience. Information or situations familiar to a middle class family might not necessarily resonate with those of an immigrant family from Southeast Asia, for instance. The reverse also applies. Then there is also access to time, money and opportunity…the list goes on.

And with advancing technology, exclusion from a growing digital world can further exacerbate these issues.

User experience (UX) design: the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function.

Inclusive design: the design of “mainstream products and/or services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible…without the need for special adaptation or specialised design.”

Inclusive User Experience means designing solutions that:

– provides access and meets the needs for as many people as possible;

– are as easy to use for as many people as possible; and

– that special adjustments have to be made for as few people as possible.

However, developing and designing for inclusivity is not always that obvious. That is because everyone’s experiences and needs are different.

Our work should always reflect and adapt to the diversity of the community we seek to service. Inclusive User Experience (UX) design methodologies can help with uncovering unconscious biases and overcome them through design.

What does this look like in practise?

Work with Respect

When it comes to user experience research, it is important to remember that users are people with varying personalities, emotions and needs. Instead of considering what kind of data and insight users can offer you, consider how you can make the users comfortable and safe.

Be sensitive to the words and phrases people use, and don’t be afraid to ask people to explain what they mean, to tell you more about something they say. This is where you can uncover really valuable information during the process.

Act Responsibly

– The information collected through inclusive design processes needs to be handled appropriately and sensitively.

– Have you asked for informed consent?

– Are participants aware of the risks when engaging with your research?

– How are you going to safeguard this information into the future?

At the end of the day, responsibility throughout the inclusive design process rests with those that are carrying it out.

A common question we are asked as Human Centred Designers is: “When should we apply accessibility and inclusive design in our process?”  Which is not only an incredibly important question, but also one without a definitive answer. There are a few things you can try though:

When:
– Earlier the better
– After the product launch

How
– Scoping and definition
– Check your process
– Know your guidelines

Every product is put together differently, and the designer’s role will be different with each product, feature, programme of work, or initiative. Knowing where YOU; the accessibility and inclusion advocate; sits within the process is key to determining how much influence can be exerted,and when Inclusive design is also not just the responsibility of one team-member, it belongs to anyone who shapes what the product does, how it’s used, what it looks like, and how it performs. The most accessible or inclusive products are also often those where the methods we outline in this document have been adopted early, and by everyone, rather than as an entirely separate piece of work.

Earlier the better

It’s obvious, but the earlier accessibility (or A11Y) is included in your process, the more likely it is to shape thinking and bring about a more inclusive result. As projects progress and key decisions are made – implementing A11Y standards becomes harder, and retroactively trying to apply rules, or review published products can be frustrating, time-consuming, and in some cases futile.

Know your guidelines (and your policy)

There are countless courses, guides, and resources relating to accessibility in design, and we have listed some of the better examples on page. Spend some time immersing yourself in not only the official guidelines (which can be slightly impenetrable); but also, some of the videos and other artefacts written by practitioners and users who not only understand the current landscape but may use the inclusive design themselves. Your organisation may also have accessibility standards, or a diversity programme in place already. If so engage them in the project to ensure you aren’t reinventing the wheel.

Scoping and definition

In some ways of working, or early in the development of a project, there are often conversations surrounding how a team intends to work, and how success will be measured against a set of established(or acceptance) criteria. There are few better opportunities to define and establish how you and your team will address accessibility and inclusivity, than at this point. By including these rules, you also ensure the product cannot be released until it meets your established rules, and therefore achieving inclusive design by mandate. Some of the acceptance criteria could include:

– The product meets WCAG standards
– The product is accessible offline
– The product can be consumed in a reader view or by screen readers
– The content is organised semantically
– The content is available in multiple languages etc.

After product has already been released or built
This scenario occurs often and can be frustrating, but all is not lost. There are several easy-to-use tools and processes you can use to analyse a digital product for adherence to accessibility and inclusion standards. From there it’s quite straightforward to create a report or a backlog of items for the team to improve or iterate over team.

Summary
In conclusion inclusive and accessible design is more effective when it is embraced by the whole team, implemented early on in the process, and mandated as part of the project’s way of working.

Keep Accessibility in Mind

Regardless of setting or context, it is important to familiarize yourself with any standards of accessibility that may have an impact on your work. For instance, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 provides a framework that can guide the work of designers working in a digital environment. The Australian Government Digital Service Standards8 also provides guidance on how we can make digital services accessible and inclusive of all users regardless of their ability and environment.

Act intentionally

The process of inclusive design and user experience cannot be a passive one. Inclusivity demands asking the tough questions to include the needs of users who are experiencing exclusion in various aspects of their lives. Especially in the digital landscape – negative, exclusionary, and discriminatory interactions can take many shapes and forms.

Acting intentionally allows us to identify these potential points of tensions and seek to remedy them as quickly as possible.

Be Honest

The ultimate responsibility for anyone conducting user experience research is to not mislead those that choose to share their insights with you. This can mean anything from being clear on what it is you are seeking to achieve; explaining the details of the research to those taking part (when appropriate); and even being transparent about your methods and approaches.

Ensure Inclusivity

The most important part of inclusive design? Ensuring that it is thought of at every single stage. From user research and co-design, to testing prototypes/MVPs for accessibility, including a diverse range of people with a variety of lived experiences ensures inclusivity is considered throughout. Inclusivity cannot be a mere add on. Rather it is fundamental to the entire design process.

It highlights exclusion

“Diversity Is Being Invited to the Party; Inclusion Is Being Asked to Dance” – Vernã Myers 

An inclusive design process sheds light on potential streams of exclusion. The team at Local Peoples believes that the process encourages us to ask the tough questions – “what bias might be in this design process?”

“Where possible, aim to assemble teams made up of team members from diverse backgrounds. Seek out colleagues or others in your immediate or extended network who are from different social or cultural backgrounds, and get their input.

“If you want to minimise bias in your process and output, the effort and energy you put into it will be repaid.”

“Smart teams will do amazing things, but truly diverse teams will do impossible things.” – Claudia Brind-Woody

Inclusive design benefits not just those we are designing for, but for all users.

“Inclusive design aims to accommodate those diverse experiences, both in the final product and in the design process itself. Inclusive design involves a broad group of people in the actual design process—both in the design team and user testing. The result of the inclusive design process is a universal design that the maximum number of people can use.”

For example, a content management system that provides transcripts for its audiovisual media can serve more than those who are hard of hearing. These transcripts can also create a helpful experience for someone that has forgotten their headphones in a library or on a bus.