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Limited awareness of people has constrained the use of the term ‘inclusion’ majorly with respect to culture, education and politics.  This has often led to the neglection of the importance of this term relating to the usability of many products and services for people with disabilities.  

Inclusive design requires a change in the usual pattern of thinking. It therefore widens and ensures the reach and accessibility of mainstream products and services to a vast majority of the population without the need for special adaptations.  

About 15% of the world’s population lives with some form of disability according to the World Health Organisation. In India, according to census 2011, around 2. 68 Cr of the population i.e. around 2.21% of the population has some of the other kind of disability. 

These disabilities include: 

• People with some form of physical disability– Upper limbs, lower limbs or both.  
• People with visual impairment– Low vision or totally blind 
• People with hearing impairment– Hard of hearing or deaf 
• People with speech impairment 
• People with cognitive impairment– Mild, moderate or severe. 

Along with this, there are other groups of people who do not directly fall into these categories but should be considered.  

• Elderly– Longer life expectancies and an aging population mean there will be more users with some impairments. 
• People with temporary disabilities– A person with a muscle pull, fractured arm etc. 

The problem: 

• Inclusive design is either often neglected or seen as an add-on, like an afterthought.  
• There’s a general lack of understanding and considering these user groups.  
• There’s a lack of understanding about how to design for inclusivity and the benefits it brings. 

Why invest in Inclusive Design? 

Inclusive design increases user acquisition and retention.

Inclusively designed products and services are good and accessible for all. With a growing population and longer life expectancies leading to an aging population, there will be more users with some or the other kind of impairments in the future. Designing inclusively creates better solutions and experiences for all. Not designing products and services inclusively would only mean losing out to a large and increasing market segment. 

Inclusive design has been practiced since a long time, but it has not yet been adopted by all.  A good example of a company which started designing with an inclusive approach was OXO good grips. A range of easy to use kitchen utensils. With their brilliant market research, packaging and marketing strategies, they were able to tap into the kitchen market to emerge as one of the best products.

Inclusive design means more profit

Imagine a product or service not being usable enough for any or multiple of these user groups. That would be a large amount of probable spending one would miss out on if they don’t design inclusively.

There’s an upfront cost but you’ll make a return on your investment.
While we may agree that designing inclusively does come with a good cost, but a company investing in good and inclusive design will in no time cover their costs and make a return on the initial investment. Not only would a not -so- useable design cost a lot of money to the company in terms of exchange and warranty but might also cause damage to the brand and goodwill. 

People are united by design

Inclusive design offers a great opportunity to bring people together. Creating and designing user friendly products and services which everyone can use, regardless of their abilities, unites people by design. It creates a sense of belonging. 

Why choose BarrierBreak 

1. Digital accessibility company with accessibility in out DNA! With inclusive culture being a big part of our company, our team comprises of individuals who can empathize with the disabled users. 
2. We understand users. We understand the different user groups and the challenges and limitations they face. 
3. It is not enough to just read about disabilities and design for to fully understand the diversity of users.  The designers at BarrierBreak work along with our accessibility experts that include people with disability and user groups to bring the most effective digital solutions and plan to do the same for products as well. 

Get in touch with our accessibility experts today. Write to us sales@barrierbreak.com 

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In my previous blog, we discussed about Inclusive Design and its importance. Today, let’s try to understand Inclusive Design in more detail considering various user groups. 

As we now know, Inclusive design is a design to aid the range of human diversity. It could mean having different features to enhance the product but, the end goal of Inclusive design is to deliver the same experience to the all users regardless of their limitations.  

There are multiple user groups and people who use various products come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have diverse life experiences. These experiences impact the way they interact with the world and things around them. Therefore, in order to make product experiences easy, diverse user groups need to be studied, understood and empathised with in order to design for them.  

• Inclusive design for people with visual impairment would be to have an alternative for visual elements such as auditory or haptic feedback, bright contrasting colours, tactile or braille marks.  Adding a tactile marking on the number 5 on a number pad would be a simple addition in the design that would help them identify the functions of the buttons on a TV remote by exploring it themselves, without being dependent on anyone else.  
• Inclusive design for people with hearing impairment would be being able to have an alternative for sound in the form of written text or some visual feedback. Example: An alarm clock which vibrates.   
• Inclusive design for a person with mobility impairment would be to have alternatives such as a big and textured grip so that it is easy for them to hold and use products. It could also be to have alternatives to access places. Such as ramps or railings in public places or multiple holding points for easy access so that they are able to move around easily with their crutches or wheelchairs.  
• Inclusive design for a person on the autism spectrum and for someone with learning difficulties would be to provide more visual elements to aid their understanding and provide them with time to make a decision.  

Inclusive design for different user groups is basically to a provide varied users with a choice or an alternative so that things get easy for them to use. People should be able to access and interact with products in their preferred way. The features of the product should be able to enrich the user experience by providing efficient and diverse ways to find and interact with the product.  

Also, inclusive design should be as intuitive as possible and should aim to make the person as self independent as possible. This sense of self independence would also enhance their experience and make the user keep going back for the product or service.  

Get in touch with the BarrierBreak team if you would like to have a quick chat with our team to know how we can help you design an inclusive product. 

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Money, a very important commodity everyone needs in order to survive and to grow and, a reward every one works extremely hard for to earn. Would it still be a reward if one can’t access it easily either digitally or physically?
Even though the world is shifting towards cashless transactions, dealing with tangible money is still a very day to day business for many of us. And for many of us dealing with something as simple as money, is unfortunately inaccessible and difficult.

India has a population of almost more than 1.3 billion people with, almost 62 million of its population being visually impaired, it is extremely important for Indians to have accessible notes and coins. The demonetization of old notes and introduction of fresh new series in 2016 has brought along its own challenges for the visually impaired users while the continuous changes in the design of coins has been tough for these users. The visually impaired group of people along with the elderly (in terms of diminishing eyesight) face a lot of difficulty in dealing with money.

But right now, let’s talk about coins.

India has seen a lot of change in its coinage since the 1900’s. With major changes in the coins’ shapes and thicknesses as times have passed, to the replacement of the low denomination notes with coins, to some denomination of coins getting discontinued; the visually impaired have had a lot of trouble identifying and differentiating the denominations of coins.

In order to ease this challenge, in 2016 a petition was filed by the National Association of the Blind (NAB) stating the need to consider including special features in order to make currency identification and differentiation, easier for its visually impaired users.

The Reserve Bank of India finally launched its new series called the ‘visually impaired friendly’ coins in 2019. These coins of the denomination of Rs. 1, Rs. 2, Rs. 5, Rs. 10 and Rs. 20 are to come into circulation in 2020.
The features of these coins include changes in weight and size of increasing order of their denomination and textured edges to some coins. A new 12-sided coin of Rs. 20 will be launched in India for the first time through this series.

We being BarrierBreak, a company supporting as well as encouraging accessibility and inclusive design, got our hands on these new Rs. 2, Rs. 5 and Rs. 10 coins and tested out their design with our accessibility testers (coins of Rs. 1 and Rs. 20 were yet to come into circulation when this user test was conducted).

A group of 10 users on the spectrum of low vision to blind were presented with these new coins and were asked to differentiate these coins in different situations. The findings and results of these activities were interesting and were documented.

The ‘Inclusive Design Approach – Visually Impaired Friendly Coins Report’ talks about the new coins, the approach we followed, the current situation of how the visually impaired users deal with coins and whether the new coins actually stand up to their name of being ‘visually impaired friendly’ coins.

We would love to hear your views on the study. This is a step to understand people’s perspectives. At BarrierBreak, we believe that it is time to include inclusive design practices in creating all solutions so that everyone can be included. Feel free to reach out to the BarrierBreak team, via email or call us to learn more Inclusive Design services.

The post An Inclusive Design study on the “visually impaired friendly” coins launched by the Reserve Bank of India appeared first on Leader in Offshore Accessibility Testing | Section 508 Compliance | WCAG Conformance | BarrierBreak.

Today, with an amazing team of talented and passionate people, BarrierBreak has grown over the years having opened 4 new offices and hiring over 200 dedicated employees. Though there was this unwritten rules of our values, we had never really sat down and written it out. Each of us was living these values, but as I said, it was an unwritten rule.

As we continue to grow, we needed to ensure that this was something we were discussing, sharing, living every day at BarrierBreak.

So how did we identify our values?

The core team and people from different teams spent a lovely morning brainstorming what we thought BarrierBreak represented.

Each one of us spoke about what BarrierBreak meant to us. Trust me when I say that this was a heart warming exercise. To hear what each of us felt, to see how BarrierBreak had touched each of our lives, was an amazing experience as the cumulative outcome made us realize the number of amazing things BarrierBreak does but never really spoke of. We mapped the ideas shared by every person and came up with the core values that every person at BarrierBreak lives by and influences our decision-making process.

We started to put down single words that each of us felt and experienced. This further was then grouped and discussed and finally, we came up with a few words that stood for BarrierBreak.  We mapped the ideas shared by every person and came up with the core values that every person at BarrierBreak lives by and influences our decision-making process.

Our Values: We believe in I³ON

• We are Inclusive
• We are Innovative
• We act with Integrity
• We promote Ownership
• We Nurture our employees and stakeholders

How are we Inclusive?

When we say, ‘We are Inclusive’, it reflects our deliberate choice to focus on people having diverse needs. One would think, it only meant People with Disabilities. Yes, we obviously do that.  Hiring people with disabilities as a part of our workforce and making them productive members of society was one of the basic principles on which BarrierBreak was founded.

At BarrierBreak, approx. 65-70% of our employees comprise of people with disabilities and the company has ensured that every employee gets the same opportunity and equal access to resources. As we employ people with disabilities in the workforce, we also understand their needs and see how we can create an enabling environment for them.

The services provided by BarrierBreak is making technology accessible and bringing inclusiveness into the e-space. Our aim is to assist organizations to make their technology accessible to all including people with disabilities.

But for us Inclusion, doesn’t start and end with Disability. 56% of our workforce comprises of women. We don’t look at the differences amongst people. We actually celebrate them.

BarrierBreak believes being inclusive requires practicing accessibility and inclusion across every aspect of an organization. And finally, making every single person in the organization accountable for it.

Are you wondering, who is responsible for building inclusion at BarrierBreak?

I can answer that! Everyone one of us is. The moment we step into BarrierBreak, accessibility and inclusion is instilled in us. We live it everyday!

And that’s absolutely true. Every person inside BarrierBreak is taught to ‘Think Accessibility First’. It’s a part of our DNA! And as an organization we live by our core values, one of them being – We are Inclusive!

The post Creating and Living our values – We are Inclusive! appeared first on Leader in Offshore Accessibility Testing | Section 508 Compliance | WCAG Conformance | BarrierBreak.