No one wants to SUX: A focus on inclusive user experience techniques
Billy Gregory, a Senior Accessibility Engineer at The Paciello Group tweeted: “When UX doesn't consider ALL users, shouldn't it be known as "SOME User Experience" or... SUX?”
The concepts of accessibility and inclusive design – designing an experience so that it usable by everyone to the greatest extent possible – are still necessary because often we are designing for the average person – the middle of the bell curve. Those people that fall to the outer edges, such as those with disability or age-related impairments, can be overlooked.
Empathy is core tenant of user experience, and it is usually other pressures – time, budget, resources, or lack of knowledge – that push us towards the average.
As user experience professionals, we already have powerful user experience techniques and with just a little bit of effort, we can these to be more inclusive. We want to share our experience using those techniques with you - research and testing with diverse users, enhanced personas that can be used for cognitive walkthroughs, and adding some extra information to your wireframes and visual designs that considers different interaction models.