Why accessibility, usability, inclusion and universal design all matter
- David Langdon
- Jul 13
- 9 min read
Have you ever used a system that technically worked, but somehow made you question several of your life choices?
Perhaps you have completed an online form that rejected a perfectly valid address, refused to recognise an apostrophe in a surname, or waited until the final page to announce that something entered fifteen minutes earlier was incorrect.
Maybe you have visited an office described as accessible, only to discover that the meeting room was difficult to reach, the signage was unclear, or the booking system required the patience of a minor saint.
Most of us have encountered products, services, workplaces and processes that were created with good intentions but did not quite work as well as intended.
The reason is often fairly simple.
They were designed through a single lens.
One organisation may focus on accessibility. Another may concentrate on usability. Some invest heavily in inclusion initiatives, while others pursue a better user experience without considering the broader range of people who may need to use the service.
None of these approaches is wrong.
They are simply incomplete when considered on their own.
At BlindSpot Solutions, we believe better outcomes are achieved when accessibility, usability, inclusion and universal design are considered together. They are closely related, but they are not interchangeable. Each asks a different question, and each reveals something the others may miss.
Accessibility asks whether people can participate.
Usability asks whether they can do so easily.
Inclusion asks whether they feel considered and valued.
Universal design asks whether the experience could have been designed to work for more people from the outset.
Together, these perspectives provide a more complete way of looking at technology, workplaces, services and business processes.
Because people do not experience accessibility, usability and inclusion as separate initiatives.
They simply experience whether something works for them.
The BlindSpot People Framework places people at the centre, surrounded by four complementary perspectives: accessibility, usability, inclusion and universal design.
Accessibility removes barriers
When many people hear the word accessibility, they immediately think about wheelchair ramps or websites.
Both are important.
Neither tells the whole story.
Accessibility is about removing barriers that prevent people with disability from participating on an equal basis with others. Those barriers may be physical, digital, procedural, communicational or cultural.
Sometimes they are obvious. A building entrance has steps but no alternative route. A video has no captions. A document cannot be read by assistive technology.
Other barriers are less visible.
A recruitment process may require candidates to complete a timed online assessment that does not allow for different ways of processing information. A customer service process may rely entirely on telephone communication. A workplace may technically offer adjustments, while making employees feel they have to justify every request.
Accessibility considers whether technology, information, services, environments and processes can be used by people with a wide range of needs.
This includes people who are blind or have low vision, people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, people with physical or cognitive disabilities, neurodivergent people, those experiencing temporary impairments, and people whose needs change with age.
It also includes people dealing with situational limitations.
A person carrying a child may benefit from an automatic door. Someone in a noisy airport may rely on captions. A person with a broken wrist may suddenly discover how much of the digital world assumes the use of two hands.
Disability and access needs are not always permanent, predictable or visible.
At its core, accessibility asks a very practical question:
Can everyone participate?
That means being able to perceive information, understand what is required, operate a system, move through an environment and complete a task with as much independence as possible.
Accessibility is often associated with standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Those standards matter, particularly in digital environments, but accessibility extends well beyond websites.
A website may meet a technical standard while the downloadable PDF remains unreadable. A workplace may have an accessible entrance while its meeting rooms, internal systems or emergency procedures create barriers. A client portal may work with a screen reader, but the instructions may still be so unclear that nobody is quite sure what to do next.
Accessibility is not about giving people special treatment.
It is about removing obstacles that should not have been there in the first place.
Usability reduces friction
Usability is about how easy something is to understand and use.
That sounds straightforward, but it is surprisingly easy to get wrong.
We have all used software described as intuitive.
Occasionally, it even is.
A product, service or process may be technically accessible while still being confusing, inefficient or frustrating. Anyone who has completed a twenty-step form only to encounter an unexplained error message will understand the distinction.
Usability considers whether people can learn how something works, complete tasks efficiently, avoid unnecessary mistakes and achieve what they set out to do without excessive effort.
Good usability tends to be quiet.
People complete what they need to do and move on. They do not need to consult a handwritten guide, ask a colleague which button not to press, or maintain a separate spreadsheet because the official system cannot be trusted.
Poor usability is much easier to spot.
Employees create workarounds.
Customers abandon processes.
Managers rely on manual methods because the approved workflow is too difficult.
Help desks spend their days explaining features that were apparently designed to be self-explanatory.
Sometimes the warning signs are literally attached to the monitor.
“Do not click this button.”
“Save twice before closing.”
“Ask Helen if the report disappears.”
These are not formal usability methods, but they are often extremely accurate field research.
Accessibility and usability often overlap, but one does not guarantee the other.
Something can be accessible and still be difficult to use. It may meet a technical standard but require far too many steps. It may be possible to complete a task with a keyboard, but only after navigating through a maze of poorly labelled controls.
Equally, something can be beautifully simple for one group while remaining inaccessible to another.
A touch-screen kiosk may be easy to use for many people while presenting significant barriers for someone who cannot see the screen, reach the controls or use precise touch gestures.
Accessibility asks whether people can use something.
Usability asks how well that experience works.
Both matter.
Inclusion considers the human experience
Accessibility and usability often focus on the interaction between a person and a product, service or environment.
Inclusion goes further.
It considers whether people feel valued, respected and able to participate fully.
An organisation may provide an accessible system, but that does not automatically mean people feel comfortable requesting adjustments.
A workplace may have excellent policies, but employees may still feel pressure to work in one particular way.
A service may be easy to use, but only because it was designed around a very narrow idea of the typical customer.
Inclusion asks who has been considered, who may have been overlooked and whose perspective is missing.
It also asks whether people have been invited into the conversation early enough to influence the outcome, rather than being asked to comment once everything has already been decided.
This is a common pattern.
A project team spends months designing a new process, launches it with considerable enthusiasm, and then asks a diverse group of users for feedback.
At that point, the feedback is usually expected to be appreciative.
Inclusion works better when people are involved before the design is finished, before the system is selected and before the policy is written.
An inclusive organisation recognises that people have different abilities, backgrounds, experiences, communication styles and ways of working.
Rather than expecting everyone to adapt to one standard model, it creates room for difference.
That may involve offering information in different formats, allowing flexibility in how work is completed, providing more than one communication channel, or recognising that not everyone contributes best in the same kind of meeting.
It also means avoiding the assumption that treating everyone exactly the same will always produce a fair result.
Sometimes equal participation requires different support.
Inclusion is not simply a policy, a training session or a statement on a website.
It is something people experience through everyday decisions, conversations and behaviours.
It appears in whether someone feels safe to ask for help.
It appears in whether a meeting allows different voices to be heard.
It appears in whether an adjustment is treated as a normal part of working life or as an inconvenient exception requiring three forms and a committee.
Inclusion is ultimately about belonging and participation.
People should not merely be able to enter the room.
They should be able to contribute once they are there.
Universal design starts earlier
Universal design is a philosophy that aims to create products, services, environments and experiences that work for the widest possible range of people from the beginning.
Rather than designing for an imagined average user and adding accommodations later, universal design recognises that human diversity is normal.
The average user is a convenient design concept.
They are also rather difficult to find in real life.
People vary in age, ability, confidence, language, experience, attention, mobility and familiarity with technology. Their needs may also change from one day to the next.
Universal design asks how a solution can work for more people at the outset, how exceptions and workarounds can be reduced, and how the overall experience can be improved.
Many features that began as accessibility measures are now used widely.
Automatic doors support wheelchair users, but they are also useful for parents with prams, travellers with luggage and anyone carrying too much coffee.
Captions support people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, but they are equally useful in noisy offices, on public transport or during online meetings where nobody wants to admit their speakers are not working.
Plain language supports people with cognitive disabilities, people with lower literacy, people reading in a second language and, in practice, nearly everyone who would prefer not to decode a paragraph written by committee.
Flexible working arrangements may support people with disability, carers and people managing health conditions, while also helping many others work more effectively.
Voice interaction can support people who cannot easily use a keyboard, while also becoming useful to people cooking dinner, driving or trying to find something on their phone without locating their glasses.
This is the broader value of universal design.
A well-designed feature may begin by addressing a particular barrier, then prove useful to a much wider group.
Universal design does not remove the need for individual adjustments. No single solution can anticipate every person or circumstance.
What it does is reduce the number of unnecessary barriers created in the first place.
It shifts the question from:
“How do we accommodate this person?”
to:
“How could we design this better for more people?”
That is a much stronger place to begin.
The four concepts work best together
The BlindSpot People Framework is intended to show that none of these ideas sits in isolation.
Each provides a different perspective on the experience people have with technology, workplaces, services and processes.
Accessibility ensures people can participate.
Usability helps them do so efficiently and with less frustration.
Inclusion ensures they feel respected, valued and considered.
Universal design encourages organisations to think about all of these things from the beginning, rather than trying to repair problems later.
When organisations focus on only one area, opportunities are missed.
A technically accessible system may still have poor usability.
A highly usable service may unintentionally exclude some people.
An inclusive culture may be undermined by inaccessible technology.
A universal design approach may still require individual adjustments because people are,
somewhat inconveniently, not all the same.
The strongest outcomes come from considering all four perspectives together.
This means looking beyond whether something works.
It means asking who it works for, how easily it works, how people experience it, who may be excluded and whether it could have been designed better from the outset.
These questions often reveal that the most important issue is not the system itself.
Sometimes the problem is the process wrapped around it.
Sometimes it is the language used to explain it.
Sometimes it is the assumption that everyone will interact with it in the same way.
And sometimes the technology is perfectly capable, but the organisation has managed to configure it into submission.
Looking through all four lenses helps expose those differences.
People first
At BlindSpot Solutions, this framework underpins every service we provide.
Whether we are reviewing a client journey, evaluating legal technology, assessing AI readiness, redesigning workflows, improving employee experience or supporting digital transformation, our focus extends beyond systems and processes.
We examine how people experience those systems and processes.
Sometimes the problem is accessibility.
Sometimes it is poor usability.
Sometimes people have not been included early enough in the design process.
Sometimes the organisation is relying on adjustments and workarounds when a more universally designed approach would solve the problem for more people.
Often, several of these issues are present at the same time.
A process may technically be accessible but difficult to understand.
A system may be simple for experienced users but confusing for new employees.
A workplace may have inclusive intentions but rely on technology that does not support different needs.
These are not separate problems from the perspective of the person experiencing them.
They are simply barriers, frustrations and signals about whether they have truly been considered.
This human-centred perspective helps organisations identify barriers, reduce friction, improve adoption, support diverse needs and create more sustainable outcomes.
It also helps organisations avoid investing in solutions that look impressive in a project update but are quietly ignored once the project team moves on.
Technology does not care whether it is easy to use.
Buildings do not know whether they are inclusive.
Processes do not notice when employees create workarounds.
People do.
That is why people sit at the centre of the BlindSpot People Framework.
Technology should work for people.
Processes should support people.
Design should include people.
That principle sits at the centre of everything we do.
Accessibility removes barriers. Usability reduces friction. Inclusion values people. Universal design brings them together.
