Glossary · Accessibility term
Inclusive design
Inclusive design means treating the full range of human variation as the starting point rather than as an edge case to accommodate once the design is finished. It is broader than accessibility in what it covers and looser in what it demands. Accessibility addresses the barriers that shut out people with disabilities. Inclusion takes in the rest of the spread too, and W3C's own list of what that means holds a few entries nobody expects. Alongside age and language it names hardware, literacy, economics, education and geography. The argument underneath is the one Microsoft states as solve for one and extend to many, which is the repeated finding that designing for a permanent disability ends up serving a far wider group. WCAG makes the same point about itself in passing. The rule asking for a visible focus indicator was written for keyboard users, and it names people with attention limitations, short-term memory limitations and limits in executive processes among those it helps.
In practice
The practical difference is when the thinking happens. Accessibility is usually a check applied to a design that already exists, which is why an audit reads as a list of things to undo. Inclusive design changes what gets designed, by bringing a wider range of people into the decisions while the decisions are still open.
Microsoft's second principle is the one people skip, and the harder one. Learn from diversity means putting people at the centre of the process rather than reasoning about them from a desk. It is why a session with somebody who uses a screen reader every day produces findings that expert simulation does not.
It is worth being honest about what it is not. Accessibility, as WCAG measures it, has a standard, three levels and a defined pass mark. Inclusive design has published principles and nothing shaped like that, so there is no level to claim and no page to fail. That is what makes it harder to sell and better at preventing the problem. Most of what an audit finds was a decision somebody made without the full range of users in the room.
Why it matters
The human reason first. Disability comes out of the meeting between a person and the world around them, which means design is one half of it and the half you control. A barrier is something a website did rather than something a person brought with them. The business reason follows from the same fact. Every barrier you design in gets paid for twice, once when you build it and again when somebody has to take it out. The second bill always arrives with less time and more scrutiny attached. Pay it once.
How it differs from accessibility
Accessibility is a standard you meet, with a pass mark and a report at the end. Inclusive design is a process that brings excluded people into the room while the decisions are still open. You can pass the first without doing the second, and a site in that position tends to be one where nothing is technically wrong and everything takes twice as long to use.
Where this shows up on the site
Related terms
- Universal designUniversal design is the idea that one design should work for as many people as possible without anybody needing a special version or a separate adaptation.
- AccessibilityAccessibility means building websites and tools so that people with disabilities can use them.
- DisabilityDisability results from the interaction between a health condition and the world around it.
- Plain languagePlain language is writing that lets somebody find what they need, understand it the first time, and act on it.
Knowing the word is the easy part.
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