Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
Gold
Thursday, September 8, 2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Share the love for this talk
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
Speakers: Sam Proulx
Link:

Summary

Many organizations struggle with justifying and prioritizing accessibility. One of the primary reasons is because they’re thinking about accessibility all wrong. Instead of a checklist, a list of legal requirements, or a set of shackles holding designers and developers back, it’s time to start thinking of accessibility as what it is: an opportunity to innovate! In this presentation, Fable will draw from our expertise helping organizations like yours start the accessibility journey, to change the way you think about disability, assistive technology, and accessibility. We will demonstrate that accessible products are more flexible, customizable, and useful for all users. We’ll also show you how accessibility is directly tied to the creation of many of the most exciting and innovative technologies of the last 50 years, and how it’s changed the entire world for everyone. This presentation will inspire you with the information and ideas you need to accelerate your accessibility journey.

Key Insights

  • Many everyday features like dark mode, voice assistance, and captions began as accessibility innovations designed for people with disabilities.

  • Accessibility should be understood broadly to include permanent, temporary, and situational disabilities, including the effects of aging.

  • One in five people currently live with a disability, making accessibility a concern for a significant portion of users.

  • Common myths hold that new design paradigms or complicated systems can't be made accessible, but history proves otherwise.

  • Accessibility requires flexible, customizable designs rather than simplified, limited versions to serve diverse user needs.

  • Designing for edge cases in accessibility often results in better experiences for the majority of users as well.

  • Diverse teams are essential to understanding a wide range of needs and creating inclusive, innovative products.

  • Accessibility is not a checklist but a continuous journey involving real user feedback and iterative improvements.

  • Retrofitting accessibility late in product development is costly and difficult; early integration yields better outcomes.

  • Providing accessible, easy-to-use feedback channels for customers with disabilities is critical to discovering usability barriers.

Notable Quotes

"Everyone already uses accessibility features whether you have a disability or not."

"Accessibility features like voice assistants and captions make the world better for everyone, not just people with disabilities."

"Disability isn't rare; one in five people have a disability right now."

"Accessibility requires flexible designs, not limited or simplified ones."

"When you design for the edges, you get the middle for free."

"It is very easy to tick all the accessibility checkboxes and still have a poor, ugly, and unhelpful product."

"Retrofitting accessibility at a later date is difficult, costly, and demoralizing."

"Accessibility is not a single project, it’s a journey that requires continuous iteration and improvement."

"Diverse teams build diverse products that work for more people."

"If your company has customers with disabilities but no way to collect their feedback, you’re missing critical insights."

Ask the Rosenbot
Lily Aduana
5 Reasons to Bring Your Recruiting in-House (and How To Do It)
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Noel Lamb
Cultivating Business Partnerships to Grow Research Ops
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Gina Mendolia
Therapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Christian Crumlish
The Pygmalion Effect: In Which a Vibe Coding Experiment Becomes a Million Lines…
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Alla Weinberg
How to Build and Scale Team Safety
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Bria Alexander
State of DesignOps Panel
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Gabrielle Verderber
Documentation Your Team Will Actually Use
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Chris Moses
Stretching the Definition of DesignOps with Product Development
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Bria Alexander
Theme Two Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
OKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
2022 • DesignOps Community
Erika Kincaid
Connecting the Dots: How to Foster Collaboration and Build a Strong Design Review Culture
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Victor M. Gonzalez
Practicing Learners and Learning Practitioners
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Jilanna Wilson
Distributed Design Operations Management
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Steve Sanderson
Discussion
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Bruce Gillespie
Learning from journalism: Balancing impactful communication with compassionate storytelling
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Megan Blocker
A Selectively Scrappy Approach to ResearchOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold

More Videos

Scott Plewes

"The story of the Indian king and grains of rice perfectly illustrates exponential growth."

Scott Plewes

Why Isn't Your UX Approach Going Viral?: A Mathematical Model

March 28, 2023

Alison Rand

"People often go along with the outcome if they feel they were part of the process."

Alison Rand Sarah Brooks

Scaling Impact with Service Design

March 25, 2021

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

"Discomfort should not be dismissed; it’s a signpost for necessary change."

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

The power to heal and harm

March 13, 2025

Sheryl Cababa

"One of the challenges for designers is to orient around forces rather than only people."

Sheryl Cababa

Living in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset

June 6, 2023

Renee Bouwens

"Research is seen as an adjunct to design, often missed in road mapping and strategic planning."

Renee Bouwens

Landing Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products

December 15, 2023

JP Allen

"Our subway lines are tool functions, and stations are where single-function tools live."

JP Allen Holly Holden

Navigating the UX Tools Landscape

October 1, 2021

Bria Alexander

"Because this is virtual, we have a digital swag bag with goodies you can access via QR code or URL."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

November 18, 2022

Llewyn Paine

"Blurring user faces loses context and doesn’t address voice privacy, making it an inadequate solution."

Llewyn Paine

[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings

June 5, 2024

Ricardo Martins

"Customers can answer what the researcher wants to hear in surveys, making attitude only 28% predictive of real behavior."

Ricardo Martins

Unlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods

March 12, 2025