Disability as a driver of innovation in UX
Disability is one of the strongest drivers for product innovation that there has ever been. Products designed specifically to meet the needs of people with disabilities are regularly adopted by the able-bodied world, but their origin almost always goes unrecognised.
Unfortunately, in most current UX practice, consideration of disability has been reduced to compliance with the WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards - and often only at the level of colour contrast ratios.
Typewriters, punchcards, telephones, transistors, and email are only some of the technologies that were originally invented for, adapted from, or commercialised because of disability. Time after time, solutions to the acute problems faced by people with impairments turn out to solve problems for the able-bodied world as well. When you solve for disability, you also solve for problems able-bodied people didn't even know they had.
In this talk, we will provide a conceptual framework and practical advice on how to see designing for disability in a radically different way – not as a requirement to meet, but as a powerful driver of excellent design for all users.