Studio Analogous

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen.

We’ve all experienced the challenges that have come with increasing awareness of dietary diversity: who can eat what? Where can you get it? What’s the best way to make as many hungry guests, friends, or customers as happy as possible? At this year’s Microsoft Hackathon 2018, the challenge was applying inclusive design to something everyone can get behind: food. Check it out: http://bit.ly/MicrosoftHackathon

Frances West has been a technology pioneer her entire life, and as IBM’s first Chief Accessibility Officer, she began her mission to bring to technology. Today, she continues to educate technology leaders around the world on how , , and are profitable, sustainable, and just. Watch her interview now:

Designing inclusively gives you a lot to consider- there are potentially as many unique challenges and needs that can guide the quality of a user experience as there are individual people. We think this comprehensive guide to an incredibly diverse series of inclusive factors in digital design by UsabilityGeek is not only a great way to familiarize yourself with some of the major areas of consideration, but also to begin training yourself to visualize and imagine the potentially infinite diversity of needs users have: http://bit.ly/DifferentTypesPeople

Have you ever seen the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri? Standing 630 feet (192m) tall, it’s the world’s largest arch, the tallest monument in the Western Hemisphere- and the state’s largest accessible building.

Symbolizing the pioneers that settled the American west, the St. Louis Arch is a major tourist destination in the region- and in 2018, unveiled an entirely new and redesigned museum complex built- and perpetually evolving- on the principles of universal design, developed for more than 3 years by an incredibly diverse committee bringing different physical, cognitive, and social perspectives. Check it out: http://bit.ly/UniversalDesingArch

One of the toughest parts of inclusive design is considering the vast range of possible needs and challenges in the population of all your potential customers or users. It’s even harder when we don’t know how to relate to the struggles that excluded users face. While one of the best ways to cultivate empathy is to actually talk to diverse people about their needs, these Empathy Prompts from GitHub are one of the coolest exercises we’ve found- do them by yourself or with your whole team- to get a real, personal experience of some of the main considerations of inclusive digital design: http://bit.ly/EmpathyP

We’ve already talked about how AI bias is a big problem, created by human bias and bad data, but what’s the alternative? AI trained on inclusive principles. Learn how the Microsoft Inclusive Design Team is applying these principles to plan new ways of developing AI to head off bias before it starts: http://bit.ly/InclusiveAI

Jennifer Brown (), the best-selling author of “Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & The Will To Change,” has made it her business to teach the world’s biggest companies how commiting to is a win-win. Watch her interview with us on our profile.

Braille isn’t a language, it’s an alphabet. It was created by Louis Braille in 1821, when he adapted his friend Charles Barbier’s “night writing” code, a series of tactile symbols made for soldiers to communicate silently and in darkness. Today, a unified Braille system is used for dozens of world languages and allows blind users to experience compatible digital media with page reader technology. Check out our handy Braille alphabet article and try it for yourself!
http://bit.ly/BrailleAlphabetStudio

You probably already know (or can guess) that modern keyboards like we have on our computers evolved from typewriters. But did you know that the design of the typewriter evolved from a design plan meant to include the blind? Inclusive design is about working from the edges of usability inward- from hardest to easiest, rather than the other way around. Read this great interview in Fast Company with Kat Holmes, the woman who brought inclusive design to Microsoft: http://bit.ly/GettingInclusiveDesign

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the international standards organization for the entire Internet. The WCAG direct Web developers, content creators, and site managers on the standards needed to reach higher levels of inclusion in their digital media; in fact, all federal government websites in the United States are required to meet at least WCAG’s “intermediate” level. You can check out this handy guide to the most important features of different levels of the WCAG, helpfully provided by WUHCAG’s Luke McGrath: http://bit.ly/WCAGCkecklist

Microsoft’s inclusive design framework has become well-regarded across the industry and has made the rounds in countless discussions of inclusion. In this great article by designer Josephine Miller, she examines specific applications of this design framework as it applies to digital design, with explicit examples relevant to page and app layout and development: http://bit.ly/InclusionAccesibility