Insights

As UX designers, we often hear these terms used interchangeably, but accessibility, universal design, and inclusive design each play distinct and complementary roles in creating better digital experiences. Through my work across various Cornell University departments—from the Law School to the Alliance for Science—I've learned that understanding these differences is crucial for building truly equitable digital products.

Reframing How We Think About Disability

Before diving into design approaches, we need to fundamentally shift how we conceptualize disability. The traditional medical model defined disability as a personal limitation—"any restriction or lack of ability to perform an activity in the manner considered normal," according to the 1980 World Health Organization definition.

Today, we understand disability differently. It's not just a health problem, but "a complex phenomenon, reflecting the interaction between features of a person's body and features of the society in which they live." Microsoft's reframing puts it even more simply: disability is a mismatch between the needs of an individual and the service, product, or environment offered.

This shift in perspective changes everything about how we approach design.

Accessibility: The Foundation

Accessibility is the practice of making digital products and services usable by as many people as possible—not just focusing on people with disabilities, but recognizing that when we add diversity to the mix, we create inclusive products and services.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide our technical foundation:

• WCAG 1.0 launched in May 1999

• WCAG 2.0 was published in December 2008

• WCAG 2.1 came out in June 2018 with three compliance levels (A, AA, AAA)

• WCAG 2.2 was scheduled for 2021

• WCAG 3.0 is currently in working draft
  
  

Here's the key distinction: accessibility is an attribute, while inclusive design is a method or framework. Ideally, they work together to create experiences that are not only compliant with standards, but truly usable and open to all.

Universal Design: One Solution for Many

Universal design emerged in 1997 from a working group at North Carolina State University. It's defined as "the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design."

Universal design considers diverse characteristics beyond disability—age, gender, race, ethnicity, native language—but yields a single solution that accommodates as many people as possible. This "one size fits all" approach, while ambitious, inevitably leaves some people out.

The Seven Principles in Practice

1. Equitable Use: Designs should appeal to diverse populations without stigmatizing anyone. Example: Strong color contrast benefits users with color blindness without calling attention to the accommodation.
   
   

2. Flexibility in Use: Accommodate individual preferences and abilities through customization. Example: Customizable dashboards let users organize information according to their needs.
   
   

3. Simple and Intuitive Use: Reduce complexity regardless of experience or language skills. Example: Progressive disclosure reduces visual clutter and cognitive load.
   
   

4. Perceptible Information: Communicate effectively regardless of sensory abilities. Example: Video transcription serves users with hearing impairments while benefiting others in noisy environments.
   
   

5. Tolerance for Error: Minimize hazards from unintended actions. Example: Form validation prevents submission errors before they occur.
   
   

6. Low Physical Effort: Enable efficient, comfortable use. Example: Keyboard shortcuts reduce mouse dependency and physical strain.
   
   

7. Size and Space: Provide appropriate interaction areas regardless of body size or mobility. Example: Proper target areas on mobile devices accommodate different finger sizes and motor abilities.
   
   

The goal isn't just accessibility—it's accommodating user preferences and desires. Closed captioning exemplifies this: originally designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing users, it's now appreciated by anyone in loud environments like airports.

However, universal design's focus on a single solution means some users will inevitably be excluded. For a more process-focused approach that doesn't always rely on one-size-fits-all solutions, we need inclusive design.

Inclusive Design: Embracing Human Diversity

Inclusive design is a methodology that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. Microsoft defines it as including and learning from people with diverse perspectives—not just disability, but age, gender, culture, language, and more.

Unlike universal design's focus on the end product, inclusive design emphasizes the process of designing for diversity. It may offer different solutions to avoid excluding anyone, helping products reach more users while reducing alienation.

Essential Elements

The Right Team: A team with different cultural backgrounds, varying abilities, and different gender identities is more powerful than a homogeneous group. Diversity in the team leads to better solutions.

Involving Users: We need to design with excluded communities rather than for them. This means including diverse users throughout the design, research, and testing process.

Best Practices

Use Inclusive Imagery: Two strategies work well:

• Abstracting: Use conceptual, human-like illustrations or even objects and animals that allow users to project their own identities

• Diversifying: Represent the full spectrum of human diversity in realistic imagery
  
  

Write Inclusive Copy: Make words work for everyone, considering different cultural contexts, reading levels, and life experiences.

Design Inclusive Forms: Consider gender diversity and inclusion in information architecture, moving beyond binary options to embrace the full spectrum of human identity.

The Three Principles

1. Recognize Exclusion: Exclusion happens when we solve problems using our own unconscious biases or fail to include diversity in our design process. We must also recognize temporary and situational exclusion.
   
   

2. Learn from Diversity: Human beings are experts in adapting to diversity. Instead of relying on simulations like blindfolds, spend time understanding real experiences from users' perspectives.
   
   

3. Solve for One, Extend to Many: Solutions that work well for someone with specific needs often benefit many others. High-contrast screens, originally for vision impairments, now help anyone using devices in bright sunlight.
   
   

Bringing It All Together

These three approaches work best in combination:

• Accessibility provides the technical foundation and compliance framework

• Universal design offers principles for creating broadly usable solutions

• Inclusive design ensures our process centers human diversity and doesn't leave anyone behind
  
  

As designers, our goal isn't just to check compliance boxes or create one-size-fits-all solutions. It's to build digital experiences that genuinely welcome and serve the full spectrum of human diversity. When we recognize that designing with constraints in mind is simply designing well, we create better products for everyone.

The future of UX lies not in choosing between these approaches, but in weaving them together to create digital experiences that are not just accessible, but truly inclusive.

Want to dive deeper? You can access the full presentation from Cornell University's Accessibility Day 2021 for additional insights and resources.

This article is based on my presentation at Cornell University's Accessibility Day 2021 and practical experience from projects across Cornell University departments, including the Law School, Mann Library, Alliance for Science, and many others.