This is a really nice video which introduces Inclusive Design recently published by Microsoft on YouTube. It shows a number of real life examples of Inclusive Design and shows how engaging with the individual is really important for inclusive design.
“If you start with the person they dictate the technology and you arrive at a point where the technology and the person feel so close and so intimate that you don’t actually see the technology anymore”
Graham Pullin author of Design Meets Disability discusses Inclusive Design from the beginnings when it was about the built environment such as the universal right to access particularly public building. Now it has evolved and broaden in several ways. It’s about products, services and to other forms of social participation.
Jutta Treviranus from the Inclusive Design Centre says “Inclusive design is not only about accessibility but a way of allowing and unlocking that participation. Try to be inclusive as possible in terms of who can use the design and make the process inclusive as well. We need designers who have experienced barriers. Disability is socially constructed, it is a mismatch between the needs of the individual and the environment, service or product offered. Anyone can experience a disability when the design, the environment, the attitude or the social structure excludes them from participating and from preforming at their optimum”.
“Diversity is our world’s greatest asset and inclusion is our biggest challenge”
Learn more at www.microsoft.com/design/inclusive .