In recent years, there has been a significant, positive shift towards designing better products and services by collaborating with the stakeholders that manage them and the people that use them. However there is still some way to go in the adoption of methods and ways of working that offer up truly accessible and inclusive means to build collective understanding and co-create.
This is particularly relevant when designing for the edges of our society as we’ve been discussing recently.
For Transform’s Research and Service Design practice, building accessibility and inclusion into our work isn’t a specialist task but rather a practice fundamental. Several of the team, including Tracey Allen, Kate Mesh, Eunice Ramos and Zoë Hough, reflect on how transformation only becomes meaningful when it’s practical, thoughtful, and grounded in real people’s needs.
Whether it’s making co‑design sessions accessible, building confidence to work with participants with disabilities, or the value of trauma informed content design, the common thread is care: taking time, preparing well, and listening deeply.
This piece sets out some of the practices our team have found useful for setting the conditions that will enable inclusive and accessible design in practice.
Making the process of co‑design accessible
Associate Director of Service Design, Tracey’s experience working with the BBC highlighted how participation isn’t just about inviting people into a room and considering the job done. Participants need to be present, of course, but to facilitate a session effectively, it’s far more important to design the conditions that allow all voices to contribute on equal terms.
So, instead of asking, “How do we make this accessible?”, try shifting, as Tracey has, to: “How do we make this work for the people who need it most?”
It might look different from workshop to workshop, and could include:
- Allowing more time for workshops, and adopting alternative strategies when they’re needed (Tracey’s blind and partially sighted participants used rolled up Blu Tack to make voting accessible!).
- Planning for assistive tech, like screen readers
- Creating alternative ways to contribute for people who feel they can’t speak up in groups, like participating in the chat or sending feedback after the session
- Acknowledging that some participants will need to know beforehand exactly what the session will involve, how long it will be, what they’ll be asked to do and when the breaks are – so being prepared matters
- Limiting information on PowerPoint presentations for neurodivergent participants and actually speaking to the slides
Recognising that access needs can change day‑to‑day, even for the same person, and meeting someone where they are is vital to creating a meaningful session. Often that includes asking what would work well for someone, rather than assuming.
Fear of offending often stops people from asking what someone needs but not asking is more harmful.
The work begins with understanding and continues with trust.
Similarly, people with disabilities often describe being consulted repeatedly without seeing change. And that history shapes how they show up. When people share their lived experience, being listened to is just the start: people want to know that change will follow.
So how do I gain confidence approaching qual research with participants living with disabilities?
Senior User Researcher, Kate has experience working in a disability-inclusive research house as a research designer.
She warns about a paradox: clients and researchers who hold the highest standards for inclusion are often the first to walk away from a disability-inclusive project, because they fear the harm they might do by getting it wrong. She says the solution isn’t to delay inclusive projects, but instead to learn practices for doing mitigating risk while taking on the challenge of robust inclusive. Here’s a four-step approach to get you there.
1. Make a highly detailed research plan
This is about bringing out as many of your unspoken assumptions as you can, so you can test them carefully before the work begins! Your plan should include things like:
How people get to the research venue or log on to the online platform
Whether people will come alone or be accompanied
How people will move through the space: walking, wheeling
How people will communicate in the session: speaking, writing, signing
Where breaks happen and for how long
What tools will be used
Even details like whether an accessible toilet on-site has a left‑ or right‑loading rail can matter for some participants. If you can include these details in your plan, participants will have a greater chance of being able to confirm that they work, or feed back that they won’t.
2. Work with partner organisations to increase your knowledge
If you’re planning to work with participants who have disabilities you are unfamiliar with, leverage knowledge collected by local charities and advocacy groups to inform your research plan.
Sometimes, a group’s website will provide rich information about the access needs you should consider when making your plan. Including relevant websites in your desk research is a must!
In some cases, you may reach out directly to a charity or advocacy group to learn more about the disability that is new to you. Partners in charities can help you to anticipate how research participants with this disability may respond to the plans you have made thus far.
3. Ask participants for feedback on your research plan
Going through your comprehensive research plan in writing or in a one-to-one call is pivotal for testing the research plan with participants before your sessions begin. Let participants know that you’re open to changing the plan, and solicit real feedback. Participants can:
Correct your assumptions (Kate’s participants taught her about safety for guide dogs after she wrongly assumed that they could go out in hot weather!)
Propose and negotiate alternatives
Ask for additional support, with enough time left for the research team to source that support.
Some adjustments are only possible when you get an early start—schedule the conversation(s) to test your plan as early as you can!
4. Work with charity partners and research participants to craft the language for your outreach comms and reporting
There is no single “correct” way to talk about disability: preferences vary by community, geography, generation or even from individual to individual. Since you will always be choosing from many available approaches, start by looking to local thought leaders, such as charities, to understand the broad preferences for language about disability in the country where you are working. At the individual level, it’s never wrong to ask a person how they talk about their own disability or access needs: if the person does not recognise or identify with these terms, they will be able to tell you the language they prefer.
When participants across a project describe themselves in different ways, you may need to choose one way for the language inside your report. You can be transparent about having made that choice for consistency and clarity. (Even when you take this broad approach, you can still write descriptions of individual participants using the terms they prefer, and make it clear that the language is changing in these places to respect their preferences.)
Taking a trauma-informed approach to design
Senior Content Designer Zoë advocates for a trauma-informed approach to design. The role of a content designer is to design things that people can easily use and understand. Zoë says that, when we understand how trauma, stress and anxiety can impact people, the importance of designing in a trauma-informed way becomes clear.
Trauma is a response in the body to a difficult experience that the person has not yet been able to fully process. Trauma can impact the nervous system, our muscles and our sleep. As designers, one of the most important things to know about trauma is that — just like stress and anxiety — can reduce people’s ability to:
- read and understand information
- make decisions
- feel safe
Trauma-informed design can help to reduce these barriers.
How to apply trauma-informed principles in design
There is no checklist for trauma-informed design. But there are principles that can be used as a guide. Zoë points to some well-researched principles, originally established by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in America. These principles are:
- safety
- trust
- choice
- collaboration
- empowerment
- cultural considerations
Every project is different, with different users and context. So principles can be added, removed and adapted for each new project. When you have a sense of the trauma-informed principles that are most important for your project, you can ensure that they are embedded throughout the design process. For example, the start of a design process often includes asking ‘How might we’ questions. Those 3 little words have an in-built power imbalance, giving all the power to the design team. Trauma-informed principles can impact the how you pose these questions — example starter questions could include:
- How might we co-create with users to build content that empowers?
- How might we better listen to users, so we can build meaningful choice into this product?
- How might we learn if users want or need peer support?
- How might we understand what language resonates or isolates?
- How and where can emotional safety be created with this service?
Similarly, trauma-informed principles can be built into job stories, design crits and team ways of working.
It can be easy to assume that trauma-informed design is only for products or services that are aimed at certain types of users. But people from all walks of life are living with trauma, stress and anxiety. At least some users will be experiencing the impacts of trauma while they navigate the products and services we design. The choices we make can spell the difference between a safe and usable experience and one that causes or increases harm. This is why it’s critical to build trauma-informed principles into every design process.
“I only feel disabled when my technology doesn’t work”
This quote from a participant in one of Tracey’s workshops perfectly captures the gap between policy intentions and lived experience.
But when we start to think about what we can do to remove barriers for the 1-in-5 who need it most, it also makes things clearer, simpler, easier, and better for the other 4, building trust along the way.
And trust enables better design that improves engagement and ensures the transformation reflects real human experience rather than organisational assumptions.
It’s not about perfection. It’s about being willing to ask, listen, and adapt.
Reach out to talk to the experts in our Research and Service Design practice today.