Designing With, Not For: Inclusive Methodologies for Co-designing With People With Diverse Abilities

Abstract

Designing accessible technologies and services plays a vital role in facilitating social and civic inclusion for people with diverse abilities; yet inclusion is equally vital to creating them. The methods through which research and design are conducted should themselves be inclusive, so that people with diverse abilities can participate as co-designers and co-owners of the work. Nevertheless, researchers working across ability-diverse populations often find themselves without a clear starting point. Existing guidelines are scarce and often difficult to adapt to specific contexts and communities. Translating resources into practice requires tailored vocabularies and procedures that are rarely documented or shared. Our workshop brings together researchers and practitioners working with people with diverse abilities to begin mapping the landscape of inclusive methodological approaches. Our goal is to surface what people are already doing including adaptations, workarounds, and community-specific practices that rarely make it into publications. The outcome will be a shared resource that includes case studies and approaches that can be used as inspirational starting points that researchers can adapt to their own contexts and communities.