Integrating Accessibility and Design: Five Hot Tips for Start-ups

Jutta Treviranus, Director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, discusses the business case for inclusive design—and how to implement it.

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Tip #1: Integrate accessible design from the start

The reason to integrate accessible design from the start, is not only because retrofitting will cost

more. Retrofitting is for information and communication technology is similar constructing a house and

not leaving room for the ramp. You're going to have to do a lot of tearing down and changing, and so that's

costly. So if its done from the start it need not cost any more, in fact what it might do is save money.

Because accessible design allows easier updating. It means more flexible adaptable design, so it means

you can reach a larger customer base.

Tip #2: Choose the right development tools

Development and authoring tools are your friend. The wonderful thing about development and authoring

tools is that they can prompt support, provide the necessary utilities such that you are guided and

almost lead through the process of accessible design. So someone that isn't very knowledgeable

about accessible design and may not be very motivated, by virtue of using the right development or authoring

tools, where accessibility is built in, they will produce accessible designs.

There are international guidelines on how to create authoring tools that will support the creation

of accessible web content. These are called the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines.

So in finding a development tool kit or authoring tool, you can look for ATAG compliant, as they are

called, authoring tools, and they will provide that support, that guidance and that prompting that helps

you to create accessible web content.

Tip #3 Focus the message and keep its presentation flexible

Good communications means getting the message to your audience. The lesson that I think we need to learn,

is that there is no typical audience. There is no typical or average end user.

So good design mean flexible design. Most people when they create a communication message, or web content,

or an application, the first thing they think about is presentation.

But in fact what we should be thinking is what is the goal, what is the message that I want to communicate.

And then enable flexible presentations. What that allows you to do is re-purpose that same product, that

application, or that web content, for the various audiences. You're going to be much more successful if

it's going to be much more usable, it's going to communicate the message much better, if you have that

flexible presentation, that can shift according to who your audience member is.

Tip #4: Increase your market: Look for "electronic curbcuts"

Startups should be looking for electronic curbcuts and what we mean by electronic curbcuts is this phenomenon

that whenever you design something for individuals with disabilities, who are, albeit at the margins

of your custom base, it usually benefits everyone.

One very very current and good example of this, is here in Toronto we had a legal challenge that required that the

street car stop be called out automatically. And while that was intended for someone who is blind,

who couldn't see what the streets were that were coming up, everyone benefits from that particular redesign.

There is a wonderful site that collects all of these examples. It is the electronic curb cuts site. If you

just google electronic curb cut you'll see a collection of all of the things that we now come to depend

upon that were originally created for people with disabilities. and it includes things like voice recognition,

text-to-speech, email, and things that you'll be very very surprised about.

Tip #5: Use a diversity of perspectives and challenges

If you want innovation and creativity in your designs, and you want your products or the things that you're

designing, to have the greatest possible usability across the greatest number of consumers, then the

best way to do that is to engage individuals with a diversity of perspectives who have experienced

the greatest variety of challenges, directly in your design team from the start.

There's research to show the more diverse a team is, the more likely they will make good predictions,

they will plan better and they will come up with more innovative and useful ideas.