Disabilities: rethinking inclusivity to avoid design-driven exclusion

In Europe, one in six people aged between 16 and 64 have a dis­ab­il­ity or recur­ring health prob­lem¹, and 12% of people with dis­ab­il­it­ies are unem­ployed – which is twice the rate for the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Accord­ing to test­ing car­ried out by APF France han­di­cap and Uni­versité of Lyon 1 Claude-Bern­ard², can­did­ates with dis­ab­il­it­ies are three times less likely to receive a pos­it­ive response to a job applic­a­tion than can­did­ates who are pre­sumed to be able-bod­ied. This demon­strates, if proof were needed, the need for dis­ab­il­ity policies in com­pan­ies, the aim of which is to restore a degree of fair­ness to fun­da­ment­ally unfair intern­al pro­cesses. These policies address intern­al pro­cesses, but what about extern­al pro­cesses, those between the com­pany and its customers?

The concept of ‘sym­metry of atten­tion’ pos­tu­lates that a happy employ­ee nat­ur­ally provides bet­ter cus­tom­er ser­vice³. This concept, which ori­gin­ated in the hotel industry, par­tic­u­larly with­in the Accor group, and is widely used in mod­ern man­age­ment, is based on the prin­ciple that tak­ing care of employ­ees improves cus­tom­er sat­is­fac­tion. Applied to dis­ab­il­ity, this prin­ciple should logic­ally mean that if we take care of our employ­ees with dis­ab­il­it­ies – with ded­ic­ated policies, work­place adapt­a­tions and trained advisors – we can expect, by sym­metry, that the needs of cus­tom­ers with dis­ab­il­it­ies will also be taken into account.

How­ever, the real­ity is dif­fer­ent. While most large com­pan­ies have a dis­ab­il­ity policy aimed at includ­ing dis­abled work­ers, far few­er have giv­en ser­i­ous thought to offer­ing products and ser­vices tailored to their dis­abled cus­tom­ers⁴.

This asym­metry is strik­ingly evid­ent in essen­tial areas of every­day life. In industry, the prob­lem is not the lack of spe­cial­ised products for people with dis­ab­il­it­ies, but the fact that con­sumer products unin­ten­tion­ally cre­ate exclu­sion: pack­aging that is dif­fi­cult to open, illegible inform­a­tion on con­tain­ers, products that are unne­ces­sar­ily com­plex, and touch screens without sens­ory feed­back⁵. In the digit­al world, accord­ing to a 2024 study by Craftz­ing⁶ of 260,000 web­sites, 94% of European web­sites are inac­cess­ible: insuf­fi­cient con­trast, images without text equi­val­ents, even though some of the neces­sary adjust­ments are extremely simple to implement.

The situ­ation is sim­il­ar in the ser­vice sec­tor. Ser­vices that are wel­com­ing and adapt­able to all types of pro­files, without cre­at­ing stigma, remain the excep­tion. Every week, people with dis­ab­il­it­ies take to social media to share their anger about how they are treated on pub­lic trans­port, in shops, tour­ist attrac­tions and gov­ern­ment offices. Simple examples suf­fice to illus­trate the prob­lem: buses with broken ramps, insuf­fi­cient in num­ber for wheel­chairs to board dur­ing rush hour; tick­et machines without voice menus for the visu­ally impaired; and pub­lic places without access ramps.

This exclu­sion is not anec­dot­al, as it affects 12 mil­lion people in France and 87 mil­lion in the European Uni­on, not count­ing seni­or cit­izens (18 mil­lion people over the age of 60 in France), people with tem­por­ary dis­ab­il­it­ies, and situ­ations of forced use that affect us all.

The fact that we take care of employ­ees with dis­ab­il­it­ies while neg­lect­ing cus­tom­ers with dis­ab­il­it­ies reveals sev­er­al flaws in the way dis­ab­il­ity is taken into account. First of all, dis­abled work­ers are under-rep­res­en­ted in design depart­ments⁷. But how can we design for every­one when teams do not reflect the diversity of users?

Secondly, there is a lack of pub­lic policy that provides genu­ine incent­ives. While the law imposes employ­ment quotas and imposes fin­an­cial pen­al­ties for non-com­pli­ance, there is noth­ing com­par­able for the access­ib­il­ity of products and ser­vices, des­pite the­or­et­ic­al leg­al oblig­a­tions on access­ib­il­ity⁸. The inad­equacy of coer­cive pub­lic policies is com­poun­ded by a mis­guided view of dis­ab­il­ity as a niche mar­ket. Com­pan­ies ignore the eco­nom­ic poten­tial of uni­ver­sal design, which bene­fits every­one: par­ents with push­chairs, deliv­ery drivers car­ry­ing heavy loads, people who are tired or stressed. 

Finally, the lack of user-centred approaches and feed­back mech­an­isms exacer­bates the prob­lem. For example, the least con­nec­ted users — and often those most in need — remain unheard in the design pro­cess. User test­ing, when it exists, para­dox­ic­ally excludes those who would bene­fit most from adap­ted products.

How­ever, sev­er­al pion­eer­ing com­pan­ies are show­ing anoth­er way for­ward: Aptar is revolu­tion­ising pack­aging with uni­ver­sal solu­tions, the Seb group is rethink­ing house­hold appli­ances for all, and La Poste and Macif are adapt­ing their ser­vices. The ‘Inclus­ive Design­er’ label recently awar­ded to them by APF France han­di­cap’s Tech­Lab high­lights their com­mit­ment and shows that anoth­er way is possible.

True sym­metry of atten­tion requires integ­rat­ing the issue of access­ib­il­ity of their products and ser­vices into com­pan­ies’ dis­ab­il­ity policies. This requires con­crete action: 

• Train­ing design teams in inclus­ive design, 
• Cre­at­ing access­ib­il­ity indic­at­ors that are mon­itored as closely as employ­ment rates, 
• Involving users with dis­ab­il­it­ies in product testing, 
• Stand­ard­ising uni­ver­sal design approaches.

Bey­ond eth­ics, this is a major eco­nom­ic oppor­tun­ity. Uni­ver­sal design, by expand­ing the use of products to every­one, mul­ti­plies the address­able mar­kets. This has already been proven in the tour­ism sec­tor, but it is also true in all areas that tar­get the aver­age consumer.