Exclusive Design: When Design for People with Disabilities Shouldn't Stop at Just "Functionality"
In the world of UI/UX design, we often talk about Inclusive Design, or designing for everyone. However, in reality, design for people with disabilities is often reduced to just engineering or meeting certain criteria. The result is a boring, lifeless interface that merely allows users to access information but lacks the pleasure of use. I've summarized some interesting concepts from the seminar video "Exclusive Design" by Vasilis van Gemert, where he challenges conventional principles and proposes four new forces to transform accessibility design into a true art and empathy.
Four Challenging Rules: From Inclusive to Exclusive Vasilis takes general Inclusive Design principles and "flips" them to better understand the real needs of users:
1. From "Consider all context" to "Study Situation"
Trying to consider every context often ends in "guessing." Vasilis suggests that we must study the real situation. For specific user groups, such as observing a blind person using a screen reader, you'll find that what they encounter isn't just information, but also unintentional "noise." Understanding the real-world situation helps us design UI that solves problems more effectively than simply reading a manual.
2. From "Be Consistent" to "Ignore Convention"
We're taught to maintain consistency, but Vasilis argues that "because the defaults aren't good enough." * For example: Screen reader systems often repeatedly read technical code such as "Heading Level 1" or "Nav," which is very annoying for the average user. If conventional practices hinder a good experience, we should dare to "break the rules" to create a new structure that truly suits the behavior of that user group.
3. From "Prioritize Content" to "Prioritize Identity"
Content is important, but the user's "identity" is equally crucial. Most websites are designed by sighted people with a certain perspective, but each visually impaired person has different tastes and human traits.
Good design should reflect the user's identity, not just create a plain black and white webpage for functionality. It must consider the "emotions" (vibe) they experience.
4. From "Add Value" to "Add Nonsense"
In accessibility design, we often focus on adding functional value, forgetting about fun. Vasilis suggests trying to "add some nonsense."
For example, designing animations for the visually impaired but adding funny narration (like a bouncing sound) as a blind person scrolls through. These might seem trivial from a functional standpoint, but they provide pleasure, something often overlooked by designers for people with disabilities.
Conclusion: Accessibility is an art, not engineering.
The key lesson from this is that designing for people with disabilities shouldn't just be a technical checklist to complete, but an opportunity to learn "what we need to add" to make the design as friendly and humane as possible.
If we shift our perspective from designing "for" to designing "in collaboration" with people with disabilities, we won't just get a usable website, but we'll also get new innovations. That changed the world of design forever.
