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
Molly Fargotstein
Multipurpose Communication & UX Research Marketing
2019 • DesignOps Community
Benjamin Real
Maturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
DesignOps and The Great Talent War of 2021
2021 • DesignOps Community
Dan Hill
Strategic design, slowdown, and the infrastructures of everyday life
2022 • Enterprise Community
Sahibzada Mayed
Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Opening Remarks
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Jeff Gothelf
The Intersection of Lean and Design
2019 • Enterprise Community
Llewyn Paine
[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Maria Giudice
Empowering change: Reigniting purpose, passion and impact in research
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Samuel Proulx
Invisible barriers: Why accessible service design can’t be an afterthought
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Julie Baher
Culture Change—My Journey
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Nancy Douyon
We'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Dave Gray
Liminal Thinking: Sense-making for systems in large organizations
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks Day 2
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Greg Petroff
Design is the Differentiator: Bringing New Design Innovations to a Very Antiquated and Very Large Industry
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Theme Three Intro
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold

More Videos

Nalini Kotamraju

"I underestimated how much identity our team tied to UX and how scary that loss felt to many of them."

Nalini Kotamraju

Research After UX

March 25, 2024

Dean Broadley

"Constraints can channel focus, but being stuck in them limits potential."

Dean Broadley

Not Black Enough to be White

January 8, 2024

Denise Jacobs

"I appreciate your allyship when I'm in the room, but I appreciate it more when I'm not in the room."

Denise Jacobs Nancy Douyon Renee Reid Lisa Welchman

Interactive Keynote: Social Change by Design

January 8, 2024

Kim Fellman Cohen

"Focus groups build empathy by letting team members share their experiences in real time."

Kim Fellman Cohen

Measuring the Designer Experience

October 23, 2019

George Aye

"Good design is honest and yes, the Jewel e-cigarette will honestly kill you."

George Aye

That Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide

November 16, 2022

Nathan Curtis

"I don't want a component library for the account home. I want a system for all of that."

Nathan Curtis

Beyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products

June 9, 2016

Greg Petroff

"We are building cross-product research capabilities to curate a holistic understanding of agents across all workflows and touchpoints."

Greg Petroff

The Compass Mission

March 10, 2021

Chloe Amos-Edkins

"Remote research methods can cast a wider net, but some briefs still require on-the-ground presence."

Chloe Amos-Edkins

A Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation

March 27, 2023

Mackenzie Cockram

"User journeys are the bedrock for deciding which data to collect and measure."

Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian Franklin

Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live

December 16, 2022