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Holmes advises companies on ways to advance inclusion in product development and digital experiences.

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UW Communication Leadership Graduate Program

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All designers should learn the essentials of accessibility so they can make sure their products are usable by everyone.

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When I was a kid I traveled quite a bit with my family. In our hotel room, my sister would ask me to lower the volume on the TV so she could fall asleep. I wasn't tired so I would enable the closed captions and read the screen. Over time, I built up a habit of watching TV with the captions on. Nowadays, I prefer it. I grasp more information and notice things that my ears don't always pick up.

Subtitles not only increase comprehension for people with hearing disabilities; for some, they are an essential part of life. Accessibility is more than just augmenting experiences; for many, it's about them getting to the table in the first place.

We all deserve equal access to information

In 1972, Julia Child's cooking show, "The French Chef," included captions for the first time in television history. The producers wanted to reach a broader audience, including deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. Nowadays, the FCC requires closed captioning on 100 percent of new television programming and 75 percent of older programming. Closed captioning laws were just the beginning of a more inclusive future. Over time, the government enacted more laws for people with disabilities.

In 1990, United States lawmakers launched the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). They sought to prohibit discrimination and enable access for individuals in all areas of public life including jobs, school, transportation, public, and private places. This includes conditions that affect mobility, sight, hearing, speech, touch, and learning disorders.

There are more than 7.7 billion people on this earth, and not one of us is the same. We are all unique and have different needs. We deserve equal access to information. As designers who work in technology, we should make sure that everything we create is accessible and usable. Implementing accessible products and services not only avoids discrimination and lawsuits. It improves usability for all types of visitors. As a result, you will reach a bigger market, have more impact, make more money, and it's great for SEO.

Fortunately, advancements in technology create opportunities for disabled people to stay engaged in the world and function in society. But how do we scale these experiences?

Scale accessible experiences with design systems

When we talk about scale, we think about systems, organizational patterns, and ways to optimize design. We want to make it easy for everyone who works in product to contribute. Most organizations use a single source of truth to organize components known as a design system.

Design systems are the secret sauce to scale and develop experiences with speed and consistency. They include reusable components and well-documented requirements for buttons, colors, typography, voice, and tone, and anything that your brand stands for.

A single source of truth keeps all brand and UI components in one location, so teams can stay in sync. A design system isn't created in one shot. It's a living document that gets updated as teams add features, products, and interface components. One thing is certain - accessibility should be baked into every design system.

Google has over 250 products and services. Everyone who works at Google references Material Design, their design system. Although Google went through extensive tests to meet accessibility standards, designers who use Material should still take the time to test for accessibility. We shouldn't leave it up to defaults. We have to be proactive to make sure that our designs reach a broad audience of people, not just people who look and act like us. We do this by embedding accessibility into the foundation of our design practice.

We have to be proactive to make sure that our designs reach a broad audience of people, not just people who look and act like us.

Nathan Curtis, a design system advocate, makes a good point when he says that just because there is a single source of truth doesn't mean that everything has been tested for universal access. It's up to individuals to know the rules and test components to meet standards.

Learn the basics of accessibility

All designers should learn the essentials of accessibility so they can make sure their products are usable by everyone. Matt May, head of inclusive design at Adobe, trains Adobe designers around the world to build and implement accessible experiences. He ensures that everyone at Adobe has a role for inclusive design. May leads full day training workshops on how assistive technologies work, informs designers about types of bias relating to, for example, geography, race, gender and economic status, and how it affects their ability to use Adobe products.

Furthermore, May scales his expertise on inclusive design through Spectrum, Adobe's design system. For the past few years, he's worked closely with the Spectrum team to make products easier to use across the board.

May defines rules to ensure people can navigate the site without a mouse, checks that components are labeled properly, and ensures there's enough contrast. He collaborates with Andrew Kirkpatrick, head of accessibility at Adobe, who validates that all products support universal access on as much as the application as possible.

There are endless resources online to learn about accessibility and inclusive design. Here are a few that stand out.

Teach Access tutorials

May recommends Teach Access's tutorials for basic accessibility training. Whether you are new to accessibility or you just need a refresher, Teach Access provides best practices to write and design accessible software. Founded in 2015, Teach Access is a collaboration by tech companies including Adobe, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Microsoft, academic institutions, and accessibility advocates.

webAIM.org

WebAIM is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of children and adults with disabilities. The site contains a series of software tools, guidelines, research, and training to create web content for people with visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive disabilities.

Accessibility for Web Design Lynda.com course

Derek Featherstone's course on Lynda.com called, " Accessibility for Web Design," is highly recommended by May. In it, Featherstone shares tips on common web interaction flows, accessible component design, and how to assure that people with disabilities can complete tasks.

W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1

Tantek Çelik, Web Standards Lead at Mozilla, recommends that all web creators review the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. Image by w3c.org.

Tantek Çelik, web standards lead at Mozilla, recommends that all web designers, developers, writers, managers, or policy makers review the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1). This lengthy document will teach you how to present content to people with diverse abilities, without losing information or structure.

The W3C's WCAG 2.1 Guidelines inform how people should format and create content for the web. It includes documentation, guidelines, info on how to use components, and examples of tested use cases to promote best practices for inclusive design.

Build an accessible design system: Tips to scale and increase access for your product or service

Cat Noone, Founder of Stark, an accessibility plugin for prototyping software, believes that companies should start with inclusivity in mind. It's never too late to make your products and services accessible. Before integrating components into your design system, make sure to test with the following in mind.

Unplug your mouse and navigate with a keyboard only

Most software contains keyboard shortcuts so users can interact with the application with hot keys and tabs. Unplug your mouse and tab through to make sure you can still navigate through the site.

Yvonne Tevis, from the University of California, recommends launching a screen reader, unplugging your mouse, and turning off the monitor. Then, spend time on the sites you like using only the keyboard with tab/shift tab, arrow keys, enter, and spacebar to get around.

Support assistive technologies and test with real people who use them

Assistive technologies help people who have trouble seeing, hearing, reading, writing, and those with physical disabilities consume the same content. In the digital world, assistive technologies include voice recognition software, screen readers, screen enlargement applications, and text-to-speech applications.

In order to create an equal user experience, seek out people who regularly use screen readers and assistive technologies. It's not enough to learn how to use a screen reader on your own. Like all great design, it's important to do research, create a prototype, and test with a person who would actually use your product.

"Learning how to use a screen reader does not make you a screen reader user," said Adobe's Matt May. "If you use a screen and a mouse regularly to interact with a computer, you are more likely to browse around what you can already see, and feel like it's good enough."

Use the accessibility guidelines provided by the operating system

Don't reinvent the wheel. Follow the guidelines recommended by the operating system you are designing for. Apple's Interface Guidelines will tell you exactly how to design an intuitive interface for their platform.

May from Adobe believes that designers should master operating system guidelines to create accessible content. May says "Apple and Microsoft have great documentation to drive accessible products. There are other pieces to it where the techniques and meeting the technical requirements come into play, but the best guidance is to follow what the operating system already gives you."

He adds, "A lot of the time, people are building things that look like operating system components, but they don't have the accessibility functionality that the OS gives you. This also means everything they do for internationalization, everything they do for security. It's really important to use and know what the OS gives you."

Write useful alt tags

Describe the image and be specific. Keep your words to 125 characters or less. Some of us freeze up when writing alt tags. Tantek Çelik, standards lead at Mozilla, recommends that you describe an image like you're reading it to someone on the phone.

Tantek Çelik, Web Standards Lead at Mozilla, suggests to create alt tags by asking yourself "How you would describe a photo to someone over the phone?"

Be mindful of contrast

Try Stark for Adobe XD to evaluate whether your design passes the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. You want to make sure that text and images of text have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. Make sure there's enough contrast to distinguish the foreground from background.

Some people can't see full color. You can communicate the same message with the following tips:

Four tips to design without color

1. Add labels, icons, or explanations

2. Add non-color signals to your links like carrots to the end

3. Change the type weight, style, or size

4. Underline links

Use proper states to indicate active vs. inactive

Material Design from Google indicates that all states should be obviously different from the other to indicate their priority level. https://material.io/design/interaction/states.html.

States communicate the status of a user interface element to the user. Give the user proper feedback to know where they are.

Use hierarchy with typography and heading tags

HTML was designed so search engines and people can look at a document and easily understand the structure of content; so, write semantic HTML. Utilize headings to organize your information and communicate the hierarchy of a page.

Layouts should be consistent and clear

Navigation, links, and sections should be easy to identify and discover. Make sure content is predictable, well-organized, and links are obvious.

Accessible design systems in action

Nowadays, most corporations and government associations have a design system. Allison Shaw, senior design manager, design systems at Zendesk, set a high-standard to include accessibility in Zendesk's Garden design system. Not everyone can see in full color. 1 out of 10 men and 1 out of 200 women around the world suffers from some type of color blindness. Addressing this accessibility concern was one of Shaw's biggest challenges.

A design system is the right place to start your inclusivity efforts because it's the foundation of your product. - Allison Shaw, Senior Design Manager, Design Systems at Zendesk

Shaw began her color explorations by defining a clear objective with a time-bound goal. "Zendesk will correct 100 percent of its color contrast issues to pass Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level AA by the end of Q2 in 2018." She explored hundreds of color schemes and checked for contrast to meet requirements. Now Zendesk has a beautiful and accessible design system with a vibrant color scheme.

When creating the Zendesk Garden Design System, Allison Shaw, Senior Design Manager for Design Systems at Zendesk, set a goal to correct 100% of its color contrast issues to pass WCAG Level AA by the end of Q2 in 2018.

Test with all types of people

There are endless resources to learn about accessibility so you can create content to reach a broader audience. Start by learning accessibility basics and staying up-to-date on best practices by reading recent website design blogs, and keep going until it's embedded in your entire design practice.

Test your products on people who look and experience life in a different way than you. Accessibility should not be an afterthought, nor should you rely on another team mate to make sure your design is accessible. As the W3C states, "Web accessibility is essential for some, but useful for all." Here's to a more inclusive future!

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Designing for Accessibility at Scale | Adobe XD Ideas

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When I was a kid I traveled quite a bit with my family. In our hotel room, my sister would ask me to lower the volume on the TV so she could fall asleep. I wasn't tired so I would enable the closed captions and read the screen.

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The Melbourne Student Life website has an innovative design but it still follows web accessibility principles.

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Go beyond Melbourne, take a trip to the beach, mountains, snowfields and historic towns, explore your travel options in Melbourne Student Life today.

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The Runway of Dreams Foundation website has an amazing web accessibility plugin that is embedded into their UI & UX.

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We work toward a future of inclusion,
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We work toward a future of inclusion, acceptance and opportunity in the fashion industry for people with disabilities. THERE ARE MANY WAYS YOU CAN JOIN OUR INCLUSIVE FASHION MOVEMENT. Contact us at to learn about opportunities to get involved near you. There are lots of opportunities to customize your support in ways that are most meaningful to you.

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Stylist Stephanie Thomas helps her clients find smart, fashionable looks and wants to make adaptive clothing more readily available.

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Adaptive Fashion Guru Introduces Disability Fashion Styling System

Stephanie Thomas' passion as well as her life's work is accessible fashion. Her company, Cur8Able, is a disability fashion lifestyle platform featuring celebrities and influencers with disabilities who share their lives and expertise as Cur8tors. They work closely with individuals on fashion to help them "live their lives with disabilities out load and in style."

Dressing for Disabilities Can Be Fun

Though the disability community is ever increasing in numbers, adaptive clothing is not readily available in the vast majority of clothing stores. To help the disability community stay en vogue, Stephanie has developed her simple, yet effective three-point Disability Styling System. "I just needed to know that I could provide a tool where people with disability would have the ability to dress with dignity, style and self-reliance," she said to a rapt audience at her recent TEDx Talk.

Clothing has to be accessible, smart and fashionable. Accessible is easy to put on and take off, Smart is medically safe, and Fashionable is desirable to the wearer, and fits the wearer's body type and lifestyle.

Cur8Able Style Suite at Abilities Expo

Stephanie is bringing her fashion saavy, as well as her expert disability stylists, to Abilities Expo Los Angeles to engage one-on-one with attendees at the Cur8Able Style Suite. These accessible fashion connoisseurs will help Expo-goers get comfortable with their clothing-addressing everything from where and what to buy, to cost concerns, to the right looks for your individual body, specific tips for dressing as a person with a disability, and even concerns such as medically safe fabrics.
For more information about Cur8Able, visit www.cur8able.com.
Pre-Register for Abilities Expo Today...It's Free!

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Stephanie Thomas' passion as well as her life's work is accessible fashion. Her company, Cur8Able, is a disability fashion lifestyle platform featuring celebrities and influencers with disabilities who share their lives and expertise as Cur8tors. They work closely with individuals on fashion to help them "live their lives with disabilities out load and in style."

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Adaptive fashion can consist of anything from magnets to velcro to special hook-based zippers, elastic panels, to tactile clothing, and basically anything that might enable one to wear their clothes independently.

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It's 2020 and when we say that it is for everyone, we mean EVERYONE. India is increasingly becoming home to brands that are especially curating clothes for differently-abled people with different needs. Internationally, designers like Stephanie Thomas are the face behind clothing that is stylish, accessible, easy to wear, and that guarantees dignity to the wearer, thus putting the ' able' in 'fashionable'. Tommy Hilfiger has an adaptive line running as well.

The Government of India recognises 21 disabilities including intellectual disability, locomotor disability, blindness, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson' disease amongst others. While efforts are constantly being made to accommodate challenges thrown by physical mobility, accessibility, and employability, if you ask a person with disability (PwD), they might be able to tell you often doing regular things that a more-able-bodied person would take for granted can be difficult. For instance, a person with arthritic fingers might find it difficult to pull a zip. Buttoning up a shirt might scare the daylights out of a person with an intellectual disability. A regular set of pockets on a regular pair of jeans might never be used by a wheel-chair bound person. The issue is also about one's dignity. Somehow, persons with disabilities are perceived as child-like, 'ill' and particularly asexual, while it's also interesting to think that very often, partial or complete dependence results in other people having access to their bodies in some of their most private moments as wearing clothes. There's also the issue of non-adaptive clothing riding up or sliding down and the wearer not being able to adjust them or having to adjust them at all times, worried about the unsolicited gaze at their bodies. ALL of this calls for a change. The second decade of the 21st century is upon us and it is high time to make our fashion adapt to us rather than us adapting to the fashion of a privileged few.

Adaptive fashion can consist of anything from magnets to velcro to special hook-based zippers, elastic panels, to tactile clothing, and basically anything that might enable one to wear their clothes independently. Designers like Stephanie Thomas focus on the importance of three things when it comes to adaptive clothing: Accessibility, Smartness, and Fashion. Everyone likes to look good and feel good about themselves, and these clothes are adaptable in how they come up with their own little secrets while giving the look of the wearer just wearing 'regular' clothes.

While such clothes are not yet available in mass markets in India, these homegrown brands are making sure that no one is left behind.
Suvastra by Shalini Visakan
Suvastra Designs is India's first inclusive fashion store catering to both persons with and without disabilities. It was founded in 2016 by Shalini Visakan, a designer from NIFT Chennai. Shalini's husband inspired her to come up with this idea. She used to notice that her husband, who is wheelchair-bound, faced a lot of difficulties while getting dressed. In a bid to design clothes that were comfortable and convenient for him, she designed shirts with magnetic buttons and pants with Velcro for him. She also designed a one-piece saree for her aunt who is also wheelchair-bound. When she decided to present the collection at the Trios Fashion Show 2017 by Courtesy Foundation, Shalini contacted an organisation called Vidya Sagar that runs a school for children with disabilities. Before designing the clothes, Shalini talked to people from this organisation to understand their difficulties and tried to incorporate features to ease particular problems. For instance, she designs specially long crotches to accommodate adult diapers and attaches bigger loops to zippers for ease with fingers. More information about Suvastra can be found here.
Move Ability by Joe Ikareth
Move Ability Clothing or MAC provides clothing and accessories for persons with disabilities in order to enable ease of dressing and undressing. They aim at designing clothes that improve the wearer's sense of self, their self-esteem and their confidence. They also want to change the way people look at PwDs. The designer, Joe Ikareth was inspired by his daughter. Instead of buttons and zips, they use magnets, velcro, and asymmetric cuts which shift the focus away from evident body disproportions in a differently-abled person, while enabling them to perform their daily tasks of dressing and undressing. The Kottayam based designer "looks at disability as ability." A NIFT Delhi graduate, Ikareth has worked with the Kerala fabric, giving it a contemporary spin and has worked with dancers, devoting a line to them inspired by movement. They individualise the designs quite often for people and also help them bring out their individuality with colours that suit them. Find more about them here.

"Adaptive clothing is not available in India in shops or off the racks in big retail. It's time that we start designing clothes for people with disability," says Anita Narayan Iyer, founder and trustee of Ekansh Trust. The Trust is trying to promote adaptive clothing in India in the mainstream clothing line for senior citizens, PwDs and people who face difficulties with their clothes post-surgery. While there are others like Chennai-based bilateral amputee Malvika Iyer, a NIFT graduate who is trying to make adapting clothing by replacing buttons and lace with Velcro and adding lycra sleeves to the clothes, more Indian fashion brands need to take it up as a fully-formed fashion line.
If you liked this article, we suggest you also read : Bridging The Gap Between Functionality And Fashion For The Differently Abled #HGDrop: An Indian Label That's Using Punk-Rock To Re-imagine Streetwear This Indian Brand's Braille Inspired Necklace Aims To Encourage Inclusivity & Equality

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Putting the 'Able' in Fashionable: Adaptive Fashion In India And Homegrown Brands

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It's 2020 and when we say that it is for everyone, we mean EVERYONE. India is increasingly becoming home to brands that are especially curating clothes for differently-abled people with different needs. Internationally, designers like Stephanie Thomas are the face behind clothing that is stylish, accessible, easy to wear, and that guarantees dignity to the wearer, thus putting the ' able' in 'fashionable'.

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Adaptive Clothing is a piece of clothing with openings that make it easier to put on. Mode Ézé Plus creates adaptive garments that follow current fashion trends.

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FREE SHIPPING on orders over $100 from Canada

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From Matane to Bali

Ézé+ are three businesswomen who have made it their mission to make dressing easier for people with reduced mobility or loss of autonomy by offering them fashionably designed clothing that is invisibly adaptive.

Mode Ézé Plus has been making adaptive clothing in Gaspésie for 33 years. Our team has played a significant role in developing adaptive garments as we know them today. All of our clothing has been designed and sewn in our Matane, Quebec, workshop.

Today, to bring you fashionable garments, we're working with a new expert who has skills that are increasingly difficult to find in Quebec. We sought and found a company in Bali, Indonesia, that shares our values and that works in close collaboration with our Canadian designer to help meet our goal of always offering you high-quality clothing.

Our Indonesian partner is manufacturing our fashion line, while our basics, including capes, undergarments, aprons, etc., continue to be made in Matane, Quebec.

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Ézé+ has won several awards, Mercad'Or "New Exporter" prize for the Bas-Saint-Laurent region (Fall 2018) as the regional Representative at the province-wide award gala for Quebec exporters, the Mercad'Or Québec in Laval.

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FREE SHIPPING on orders over $100 from Canada Boutique : Come shop directly at our boutique at 6490 Beaubien East, Montreal. Monday to Friday 9AM to 5PM. Closed on Saturday. FAST DELIVERY WITH DICOM, 2 TO 3 BUSINESS DAYS.

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Mainstream brands have been slow to embrace adaptive design, but Tommy Hilfiger has stood apart and has proof it’s working.

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TOMMY HILFIGER
ADAPTIVE

Versatile pieces with the function built in are your
one-way ticket to dressing ease.

Versatile pieces with the function built in are your one-way ticket to dressing ease.

SHOP BY SOLUTION

EASY CLOSURES

One-handed zippers, magnetic buttons and more

COMFORT

Sensory-friendly and stretch fabrics

FIT FOR PROSTHETICS

Expanded openings and adjustability

SEATED WEAR

Designs for wheelchair riders

❮❯

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Versatile pieces with the function built in are your one-way ticket to dressing ease. Versatile pieces with the function built in are your one-way ticket to dressing ease.