Designing for Inclusion: Ensuring Accessibility for People with Disabilities

Abstract

People with disabilities make up almost 19% of the population of the USA, and the aging population trends mean that number may increase. Creating digital materials that follow accessibility principles is crucial to ensuring that they are broadly useful; regulatory and legal pressures add to the urgency. Planning for accessibility from the start of a project is always more cost-effective than fixing problems later, and most accessibility features have no extra cost when they are designed from the start. This chapter provides an introduction to accessible design for maximal inclusivity. It includes an outline of the ways people with disabilities use technology, specific steps you can take to create accessible materials, considerations for non-digital materials and events, and use cases that highlight the benefits of accessible design. Because usability and accessibility are partners in this process, with each discipline taking a slightly different approach to ensuring user satisfaction, information on including participants with disabilities in user testing is also included.