Moving Beyond the Medical Model
Current approaches to accessibility have been criticized for relying on a “medcial model of accessible design”, which adapts normative designs as last-minute solutions to accommodate users with disabilities.
This approach, besides being insufficient, is seen as condescending, as instead of addressing the root causes of inaccessibility, it offers post-hoc solutions and focuses solely on meeting standards like WCAG 2.0 and W3C.
Limitations of the Standards
These standards, while useful in ensuring that content is accessible, do not address important aspects of making designs truly usable, such as information architecture or the semantic organization behind the content—key factors for fully understanding any interface.
A clear example of this is screen readers: an adaptive technology designed to fill the accessibility gaps created by designs that focus exclusively on visual interfaces and, therefore, are inherently exclusionary by design.
Moreover, it has been shown that WCAG 2.0 only covers half of the accessibility issues faced by users, revealing a significant limitation in an approach that relies solely on compliance with standards.
Accessible Design, Design for All
On the other hand, there is also a cultural and educational issue surrounding the belief that products designed for people with disabilities are inferior to those created for the general public or that they serve a limited, residual niche of users, thus perpetuating poor design practices.
When examining the high financial and social costs of retrofitting existing systems—primarily designed for able-bodied users—inclusive design ceases to seem like a burden.
Similarly, those who engage in inclusive design quickly learn that disability awareness goes beyong knowing the individual characteristics of a particular group. They understand that structures designed with a limited view of ability generate widespread exclusions. By analyzing contemporary designs that assume "perfect" bodies, they discover that these do not exist and that such approaches exclude many people, whether due to disability, aging, or temporary limiting conditions.
The reality is that designing accessibility into an interface through an inclusive process not only benefits users with disabilities but also improves usability for the majority, including older adults, very young users, and inexperienced users.
Towards an AUX Model
Faced with all this, the proposal for true accessibility is to change the approach: rather than seeing people with disabilities as passive users, the final recipients of a design made by others for them, they should be considered collaborators in the design.
Participatory design models, where people with disabilities collaborate from the conceptual stages, are essential for creating truly effective inclusive solutions. Their lived experiences and unique knowledge not only provide know-how that only they possess but can also contribute to innovations that benefit all users.
The Accessible User Experience model, known by its acronym AUX, emerges as a way to transform UX practice towards true accessibility, going beyond mere compliance with standards.
A Lens for Diagnosis
In practice, this model offers a holistic approach to examine and improve design practices, considering several key aspects. Each of these aspects can be used as a guideline or recommendation to examine our design—whether a practice, process, or artifact—to identify areas for improvement:
- Examination of ableist attitudes: Evaluate the biases, assumptions, and ableist attitudes—i.e., those that involve prejudice toward people with disabilities—present in the design, including language and design choices.
- Autonomy and diversity of users with disabilities: Recognize the diversity and agency of users with different physical, cognitive, and linguistic abilities, which vary over time and context.
- Designer education: Incorporate knowledge about the lived experiences of people with disabilities and create continuous learning opportunities.
- Recognition of expertise from disabled users: Prioritize the knowledge of users with disabilities as expert experience rather than subordinating it to the expertise of professionals.
- Seat at the design table: Ensure that users with disabilities are co-creators and co-designers.
- Building a knowledge base: Document accessibility experiences to identify long-term patterns and learnings.
Building on this approach and guided by the AUX model, we aim to create a robust methodological framework that will drive our UX research toward achieving real and impactful accessibility.
The challenge is not only to implement this methodology in a comprehensive way, but also to seamlessly integrate it into the already complex processes and dynamics of the industry. At the same time, it’s crucial to secure the support and commitment of all stakeholders involved in the project—an ambitious challenge that we embrace with enthusiasm.
References:
- Palmer, Z. B., Oswal, S. K., & Huntsman, S. (2019). Breaking the Exclusionary Boundary Between User Experience and Access. Proceedings of the 37th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication, 37:1–37:2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3328020.3353920
- Power, C. D., Petrie, H., & Freire, A. P. (2012). Guidelines are only half of the story: accessibility problems encountered by blind users on the web . In CHI '12 : Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 433-442) https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2207736
- S. K. Oswal, "Reshaping the Philosophical Backdrop for Disability-Inclusive User Experience Design: The Case of a Socially-Aware, Collaborative, International Translation Project," 2022 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm), Limerick, Ireland, 2022, pp. 358-363
- Oswal, Sushil K. (2014). Participatory design. Communication Design Quarterly Review, 2(3), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/2644448.2644452
