You, Me, and Accessibility in 3D Pt. 1: Designing for An Inclusive Future

Part 1: Current Page

Part 2: Designing Immersive and Adaptive Experiences

Part 3: Designing Inclusive Spatial Interactions and Visual Cues

Part 4: Designing for Auditory Engagement

Part 5: Designing New Ways to Navigate

Part 6: Designing Feedback and Learning

Part 7: Designing A Strategic Process

As the future of technology leads to more immersive experiences, we have the opportunity and responsibility as creators to ensure they are accessible and inclusive.

By Caitlyn Haisle, Design Director at CARNEVALE

While accessibility in web and traditional software is established and well-defined, the land of accessible 3D/XR experiences is still largely uncharted.

This is an exciting and innovative space that we are eager to explore.

What do we mean by 3D?

Let’s get more specific. When we’re talking about 3D, we mean immersive digital experiences like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), falling under the umbrella term of extended reality (XR).

Augmented Reality: The blending of digital and physical worlds. Digital elements like 3D objects or information are overlaid onto the view of the physical world using a smartphone or augmented reality glasses.

Virtual reality: Complete immersion into an interactive digital environment, replacing the physical world, using a virtual reality headset or goggles.

Redefining Accessibility and Inclusion

The foundation of an accessible future is built on inclusive design, which can be simplified to “creating the greatest experience for the greatest number of people.” At CARNEVALE, we care about creating experiences that people from diverse, not average, backgrounds, identities, and abilities can use.

Accessibility Is More than a checklist

Accessibility is not ADA compliance. Okay…maybe sometimes it is. American with Disabilities (ADA) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) compliance are often an important component of accessibility. For traditional mediums like web, WCAG is treated like the beacon of truth and validation tool for determining if an experience is accessible.

A checklist is a starting point, but it’s also limiting. An experience can check off all the boxes for accessibility but still somehow not be accessible or successful. We like to think about accessibility like a layer of design thinking that can influence the way we think, problem-solve, and design experiences.

Accessibility Is Intentional

For accessibility to work, it has to be intentional. It’s not enough to want to make something accessible—it has to be planned for and considered throughout every step of the design process. It’s not enough to have good intentions and hope we get it right.

If we do not intentionally include, the risk is that we unintentionally exclude.

Inherently, we all have biases that we try to overcome when we design experiences. It’s why we go through exercises like developing user personas and archetypes to view our solutions from others’ perspectives to meet their wants and needs. Accessibility is another set of perspectives to view our solutions from.

If we’re not intentional, we end up designing things for ourselves, making assumptions that exclude end users from our products.

Accessibility Is Designing With, Not For

The best way we can combat our biases and assumptions is to view accessibility as designing with, not for. Let’s say we’re designing an app, and we want to make sure people who are deaf or hard of hearing will have an equitable experience using the app. Instead of focusing on designing it for them, let’s design it with them. Let’s have conversations, collaborate, and make a better product. Let’s take insight directly from the people we want to include.

Throughout this project, we met with people from different abilities and backgrounds. It helped shape our perspective, exploration, and understanding of what an accessible future could be.

Accessibility Is Innovative

We’ve heard the complaint that accessibility is restricting or limits creativity. In the end, those same constraints make the experiences better for everyone. There are countless advancements throughout history that started out as an accessibility innovation. Some examples are keyboards, texting, captions, curb cuts in sidewalks, and adjustable seats in cars just to name a few.

1 in 5 people have a permanent disability, but throughout our lives, we all experience temporary or situational disability. Things like being in a loud environment, the bright sun making a glare on our screens, only being able to use 1 hand to interact with our phones because we’re carrying something in the other, and many other factors impact our ability to interact with not just digital experiences but the world we live in.

It’s a myth that accessibility is just designed for edge cases. Accessibility and inclusion benefit everyone and make better, more innovative solutions.

Accessibility Is An Opportunity

Emerging technology in 3D like augmented reality and virtual reality is still relatively new. It hasn’t been perfected, standardized, or automated. As designers, this puts us in an exciting position to explore what an accessible future could be in these immersive experiences before the guidelines are created. Maybe we can even influence them.

To us, it’s an opportunity to impact the future.