Accessible and inclusive digital services are desperately needed in an increasingly digital society. Yet inclusive User Experience (UX) design continues to lag behind in practice, despite growing social expectations and legal obligations. This research shows that designers, both in education and in professional practice, often still assume the ‘average user’. Not because they do not consider inclusion important, but because existing guidelines, tools, and processes require a lot of time, specialist knowledge, and organizational adjustments. As a result, inclusivity is too often added to a design later on, rather than being designed in from the outset.
This study compares three perspectives: UX education, the practice of design agencies, and the broader design chain. The main bottlenecks were identified and compared in three phases. Together with designers, teachers, students, and partners, these insights were translated into practical guidelines, new concepts for tools and methods, and a joint agenda for future research.
The impact is already visible: the results are being used in the revision of curricula for digital design programs, including Communication and Multimedia Design (CMD). This is paving the way for a future in which upcoming designers are able to design accessible and inclusive digital services from the outset.
The central question of this project was:
“How can designers, educational programs, and organizations work together to build a design practice in which inclusivity is not an addition but the starting point?”