Software & Services
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Commentary
6 Principles to Ensure We Design Connected Products for Accessibility
We researched and identified several design and engineering accessibility principles based on existing practices to help create more equitable products, systems, and services.
Justin Porcano
Senior Industrial Design Manager, Accenture Industry X
March 08, 2023
Credit: Dzmitry Dzemidovich via Alamy Stock
Products and services are moving from physical to digital experiences. This tends to make life easier, but it also creates accessibility issues for the more than one billion people around the world with disabilities.
Take a TV remote — an everyday device but a constant challenge for those with low vision. It crams information into a small space displayed in small font, without much contrast on the device itself.
Currently, there are almost no accessibility standards for common physical equipment we interact with daily, whether it’s a thermostat, a printer, or a TV set. Connect these products to a digital ecosystem of other products and services and you add complexity — notably not addressed in any current accessibility guidelines, like the American Disability Act and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
These common regulatory standards provide a baseline for accessible design, grounded in government research, organizational best practices, and compliance checkpoints. But compliance doesn’t necessarily [...]