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Innovative product & service offering

The demographics of the marketplace are changing fast as is the demand from consumers for flexible products and services, carefully designed with the user in mind. The 50-plus generation will grow by more than 6 million in the next 25 years. Annual consumer spending of the UK's 50 to 69 year-olds already runs at £300bn. [iv]

Special purpose and customisable products are often adopted and welcomed by customers with no difficulties, as time and time again they simply work better for everyone. Many fully-sighted people find Tesco's Access site easier to use than other sites. Although originally designed for visually impaired users, the site now attracts a much wider audience, spending £13 million a year. [v]

Any group that is currently excluded from the process of innovation could have something to offer, but including disabled people, who are proven innovators, is likely to be even more effective.

'Disablism' DEMOS [vi]

Inclusive design helps business to reach a wider market and reduce the cost of the Walk Away £.

Design for All

The seven principles of universal design

  1. Equitable - the design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities
  2. Flexibility in use - the design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities
  3. Simple and intuitive to use - use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills or current concentration level
  4. Perceptible information - the design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities
  5. Tolerance for error - the design minimises hazards and adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions
  6. Low physical effort - the design can be used efficiently and comfortably with a minimum of fatigue
  7. Size and space for approach and use - appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user's body size, posture or mobility[vii]

Typically, domestic appliance controls require force; mobile phones have miniscule buttons and even smaller print in their complex instruction booklets; childcare products, such as safety gates, have painful opening mechanisms; cars have high door and boot sills; and digital heating programmers have displays and complex setting sequences that defeat all but the most determined older users.

Products that can be used by older and disabled people are easier to use for nearly everyone else - more comfortable to use and requiring less effort...More and more designers are finding that an understanding of how previously marginalised people use their products provides an impetus for sometimes revolutionary improvements

Inclusive Design Policy Review,
Ricability [viii]

The business benefits

Case studies

Useful links

Inclusive Business RCA

Inclusive Business RCA is an applied research programme that aims to raise design standards in products and services that include the needs of disabled people. Inclusive Business RCA works with a range of partners from industry, in tandem with the design, voluntary and academic sectors, to help them identify, enhance or establish ways to increase their ability to respond to new demographic and market challenges.

Microsoft enable website - case studies

Read real world case studies featuring professionals with disabilities working in the manufacturing, government, healthcare, retail, and financial industries. These case studies feature best practices and lessons learned.

See also

Sources

  1. [i] Employers' Forum on Disability Survey, 2006
  2. [ii] Paul Miller, Sophia Parker, Sarah Gillinson, Disablism, 'How to tackle the last prejudice' , Demos 2005
  3. [iii] RNIB, quoted in AbilityNet State of the eNation report.
  4. [iv] Mintel, Selling to and Profiting from the over 50s report, 2005
  5. [v] RNIB quoted in AbilityNet State of the eNation report
  6. [vi] http://www.demos.co.uk/themes/~disablism
  7. [vii] Lindsey Etchell, David Yelding, 'Inclusive design: products for all consumers' , Consumer Policy Review, Nov/Dec 2004
  8. [viii] www.ricability.org.uk/reports/pdfs/InclusiveDesignPolicyReview.pdf