This page explores ability-based design and its associated accessibility advantages, along with related principles that enhance user experience.
Ability-based design
This approach focuses on leveraging user capabilities to craft interfaces that harness them. In this context we recommend consulting resources such as "Ability-Based Design: Concept, Principles and Examples" by Jacob O. Wobbrock and others. Here are some core takeaways applicable to building natively adaptable interfaces:
- Shift focus from disability to ability: the core principle is to design for the spectrum of human abilities rather than focusing solely on specific disabilities. This broader perspective leads to more inclusive and usable designs for everyone.
- Embrace the continuum of abilities: recognize that abilities exist on a continuum. Users don't fall into binary categories of disabled or non-disabled. Design should accommodate a wide range of capabilities in areas like motor skills, vision, hearing, and cognition.
- Design for a wider audience: by focusing on abilities, designs become inherently more accessible to a larger user base, including those with temporary impairments, age-related changes, or varying skill levels.
- Take advantage of user strengths: identify and design interfaces that effectively use the abilities that users do have. This approach can lead to more intuitive and efficient interactions.
- Context matters for abilities: a user's abilities can fluctuate based on context, for example, environment, fatigue, technology used. Designs should be flexible enough to accommodate these variations.
Curb-cut effect
Designing for edge use cases benefits everyone, a cornerstone of inclusive design. The term curb-cut effect, originating from the physical ramps cut into sidewalks, illustrates how a feature designed for wheelchair users also aids people with strollers, delivery carts, and luggage. This principle extends to digital design: an accessibility feature like high-quality text-to-speech, for example, can also benefit users who are hands-free or learning a new language.
This phenomenon highlights a key principle of inclusive design, encapsulated in the quote by Rama Gheerawo, Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre: "If you design for the edges, you get the center for free." The following breaks down this quote and its connection to the curb-cut effect:
- "Design for the edges": this principle means focusing design efforts on individuals at the margins or edges of the user spectrum. These could be people with disabilities, older adults, or those with specific needs or limitations. In the case of curb cuts, wheelchair users were considered a primary group at the edge of mobility.
- "You get the centre for free": this means that designing solutions to effectively meet the needs of edge users often inherently benefits the majority of users, who are considered the average user, also called a center user. The benefits ripple outwards, improving usability and accessibility for a much broader audience without requiring additional specific design efforts for them.
Universal design
Similar to the curb-cut effect, universal design involves creating environments and products accessible, understandable, and usable to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of age, size, ability, or disability. It aims for inherent accessibility, making products usable by everyone without the need for adaptation or specialized design. Think of it as a broader philosophy that the curb-cut effect often exemplifies.