Throughout the last century, the term “Accessibility Design” has been established to describe the practice of designing for the future with physical and mental inclusivity in mind. Many designers, scholars, and educators have attempted to consolidate the term into a single definition or to confine it to a uniform meaning. While the general idea of what it means to create for a more universal audience has been understood and adopted into the mindset of designers, it often comes as a last step in the process of creation. By establishing a single, unified definition, it may allow the field of accessibility design to be taught more easily to fledgling designers and take a more forefronted position in their individual design processes. This paper aims to centralize the definitions of the aforementioned terms to create a clearer role for accessibility in the design process.

Universal Design, Accessibility Design, Inclusive Design, Human Computer Interaction Accessibility, Product Design Accessibility, Web Design Accessibility

Accessibility is a term most often used in design regarding legal issues and requirements in the product. Even the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act(AODA), established in 2005, doesn’t lay a clear definition of the term, defining only what a disability is and what an “Accessibility Standard” is, which is related. A standard, however, is the product of the design process, which means that the core definition of Access for those with disabilities feeds into it.

“Inclusive Design” is a term that often gets used interchangeably with “Accessible Design”, but throughout the recent history of design the word inclusive has been used in a more identity politics-centric way. While it is important to design inclusively, there is not a full crossover of that and accessibility and they should be considered separately.

“Universal Design” is the umbrella, catch-all term that aims to centralize the definitions of the aforementioned terms to create a clearer role for accessibility in the design process. The root word is more commonly used than the other two terms, meaning more fledgling creators may understand it with little previous knowledge.

As long as Human Rights have been discussed, disability inclusion has been a hand-in-hand topic. Throughout the past two centuries, awareness has been brought to universality in access, especially in workplaces. In the 1900s countries began establishing legally enforceable accessibility standards for different products. This was because, with the increased amount of public eye on combat and wars, the number of veterans with some condition, either physical or psychological was much more noticeable.(Persson, Ahman, Yngling, Gulliksen, 2014) Documents were passed like the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.(David, 2023)The AODA was later than a lot of other similar documents, being implemented in 2005. It lays standards for many types of products, including architecture, services, and web-based products. The AODA has heavy fines for companies that are not in compliance, and there was a 20 year plan included with the document that would have the province fully accessible, by the document's standards, by 2025. This was called “The Road to Accessibility” and if an individual was non compliant, the fine could be anywhere from $200 to $2,000, with corporations being fined up to $15,000. The AODA never defines accessibility, with other terms instead being covered, but it does define Accessibility Standard. The definition is unhelpful in the case of this paper, as it states “accessibility standard” means an accessibility standard made by regulation under section 6.”(Ontario, 2005)

In order to criticize and evaluate flaws in the current usage of “Accessibility Design” as a term and a method, a review must be conducted to examine how the term is viewed and used in today’s scope. In order to do this, two factors must be evaluated. First, an understanding of how Accessibility is taught to new designers and where it's put into the design processes they are learning must be garnered. Second, a review of design norms as they are put into practice by professionals during the product design and creation steps they implement.

In design schools running undergraduate programs, accessibility is typically taught on a course by course basis with each instructor relating the information they deem necessary to the curriculum. In a graduate setting, the students can then more specifically organize their courses if they have an interest in a more universal design approach but given their lack of in-depth previous training, this would be surprisingly unlikely. Accessibility is taught in a separate module lasting a few weeks, or less commonly as a standalone course. (Putnam, Dahman, Rose, Cheng, Bradford, 2016)

Most designers spend under 10 percent of a given project on accessibility factors, with the majority of that time being dedicated to visual impairment aids(Yavuz, Guribye, Rajanen, Rajanen, Rost 2020, 6). This data was collected specifically in a scope of Nordic countries, but represents the design community as a whole. Some examples of visual impairment aids for a digitally based product may include colour-blindness modes, screen-readers, but this means that other forms of digital accessibility such as closed captions, motor impairment aids can be neglected. As for reasoning, over 50 percent of designers paid attention to accessibility due to the illegality of ignoring it, with all other documented reasons being lower.

Going to the root of a problem can mean examining the education of the field in which the systemic issue exists. Curriculums can be written with accessibility built into the content without compromising the value of the course content (Whitney 2020). By breaking course concepts down to basics, instrumental accessibility ideas can be woven in. Michael Whitney, in his paper titled “ Teaching Accessible Design: Integrating Accessibility Principles and Practices into an Introductory Web Design Course”, lists some basic ways of describing web design concepts that include universality and different involved variables that may need to be changed to include a wider audience.

There are several valuable methods of incorporating accessibility into curriculums. (Putnam, Dahman, Rose, Cheng, Bradford, 2016) These include emphasizing the demographics of the target market, simulating disabilities for the students(E.G. With a colour blindness simulator), or interaction and interviews with those with barriers. By incorporating these into the curriculum, design students will be able to move forward in their careers with an understanding of how individuals will make use of their designs.

Many think that accessibility is limited to designing for those with disabilities and, while it is important to remember those individuals in the forefront of the design mindset, accessibility means more than just creating for any one specific group, and limiting who you are designing for directly goes against the proposed definition of accessibility design. (Henry, 2014) The Microsoft Universal Design Toolkit, while also amalgamating the use of the aforementioned terms, contains explanations on how accessibility stretches outside the confines of disability. (Shum, Holmes, Woolery, Price, Kim, Dvorkina, Dietrich-Muller, 2016) They include bartenders who can’t hear under their hearing loss section, or new parents holding their babies under the same category as individuals with one arm. This use of design to create environments and products that work for people with barriers, regardless of the nature of said barrier, create more accessible designs and allows for more people to make use of the final product. This is one definition of accessibility that creates opportunity in design while still focusing on individuals with some form of barrier.

An important consideration with accessibility in design is the environment. This pertains more to physical artifacts of design than web and software based products. If a piece is created to be the most accessible and usable product of it's kind, it doesn’t matter if the product can’t be access or the environment isn’t available to individuals that could make use of it.(Tobias, 2007) It is not realistic to expect every product to have all of it's features be made perfectly accessible, but by creating standards and clear definitions there may be a shift to, piece by piece, more available environments.

Solid definitions can be laid out for the three aforementioned terms. With a foundation set in stone, building curriculums and legislations that allow for more consistent design standards can be set. A Venn-Diagram based system would work well, with the following definitions in use.

Universal Design: Creating with the mindset of allowing as many people as possible to use the product or service.

Inclusive Design: Creating with specific, marginalized groups in mind.

Accessibility Design: Creating with specifications dedicated to groups with physical or psychological barriers, using general concepts so as to include individual instances of peoples conditions.

Adoption of these definitions in the design field could allow for more consistent understanding between creators when the terms are discussed both in education and legal matters. Universal Design would live up to its root word, being a “Design For All'' approach. Inclusive Design would be more specific than that but would include those without disability or circumstance based barriers. And finally, Accessibility Design could be used as a specific moniker when teaching how to design around and for people's individual barriers.

As seen above, course curriculums can be written with accessibility in mind. Even just a rewording on basic concepts and building blocks, especially for design and production based courses, will introduce the importance of certain standards to creators and allow them to prioritize their work accordingly going forward.

A useful tool for categorizing the accessibility of a design could be a visual framework. In “A Framework and Representation for Universal Product Design”, McAdams and Kostovich propose a system of graphing that compares products to other versions of themselves to test universality between the two. By adapting this framework, it could be usable to apply to both physical products as it was created for as well as web and software designs by comparing functionalities to similar programs. (McAdams, Kostovich, 2011)

Without solid definitions for terms, it can be much harder to find order in the use of those terms. Accessibility has become an important part of design in today's world, and creating a method of interaction between your designs and marginalized groups is becoming more expected in a legal sense. With design classes in universities having their accessibility oriented curriculums be limited to either separate courses or modules instead of linking it directly with course content, it separates it in the minds of these young designers. This has the potential to make accessibility a last step in the creation process, an afterthought, due to its separated nature. Many designers only consider accessibility due to the legal concerns of ignoring it. This is not helped due the the muddiness of the terms use in legal documents, confusing Universal, Inclusive, and Accessible branches of design.

By establishing a single definition for Accessibility Design and the related terms, it may allow for those terms to be more understood and used more consistently in curriculums and legal documents.