Elise Roy is Vice President, Product
Inclusive Design and Accessibility at
Salesforce, and gave a Ted Talk with 1.2
million views. She is a deaf lawyer, artist,
artisan, inclusive designer, and human
rights advocate.
Chrissy Casavant: Hi Elise! I came across your Ted Talk and I thought the way that you talk about inclusive and accessible design is really digestible and you make it seem very logical. So I’m excited to talk to you today. Could you just tell me a little bit about how you got into design and what your path was like from being a lawyer and then the transition into what you’re doing now?
Elise Roy: I kind of have a crazy path. When I was a lawyer, I was actually in Zambia and I was 29 and while I liked the end result of the work, the day to day stuff I didn’t enjoy so much. As a kid I had always loved design and in college I took design courses so that kind of inspired me to make that shift into design. That was when I first got into graphic design as well and that was fun, I loved it, but I missed the “doing good” part. So I went back to school to MICA. They have a program on social design. I got my Master’s there, and while I was there I fell in love with application design, and then realized that there are all sorts of barriers because of hearing loss and that’s what I started trying to solve for. My solution, that I talked about in the TED Talk, is the safety glasses. It was my first introduction to inclusive design when I didn’t even know what inclusive design was. Through the concept of designing for disability and traditionally excluded populations helps us design better for everyone. In the case of the safety glasses, it was a single safety mechanism that could be applied to a broad variety of us, and something that helped people whether they were deaf or not. That was my journey, there’s a lot of other stumbles along the way as well.
Chrissy Casavant: Hi Elise! I came across your Ted Talk and I thought the way that you talk about inclusive and accessible design is really digestible and you make it seem very logical. So I’m excited to talk to you today. Could you just tell me a little bit about how you got into design and what your path was like from being a lawyer and then the transition into what you’re doing now?
Elise Roy: I kind of have a crazy path. When I was a lawyer, I was actually in Zambia and I was 29 and while I liked the end result of the work, the day to day stuff I didn’t enjoy so much. As a kid I had always loved design and in college I took design courses so that kind of inspired me to make that shift into design. That was when I first got into graphic design as well and that was fun, I loved it, but I missed the “doing good” part. So I went back to school to MICA. They have a program on social design. I got my Master’s there, and while I was there I fell in love with application design, and then realized that there are all sorts of barriers because of hearing loss and that’s what I started trying to solve for. My solution, that I talked about in the TED Talk, is the safety glasses. It was my first introduction to inclusive design when I didn’t even know what inclusive design was. Through the concept of designing for disability and traditionally excluded populations helps us design better for everyone. In the case of the safety glasses, it was a single safety mechanism that could be applied to a broad variety of us, and something that helped people whether they were deaf or not. That was my journey, there’s a lot of other stumbles along the way as well.
C: So were welding glasses your thesis project at MICA?
E: Yeah! My thesis was overall looking at what the barriers were for deaf individuals and fabrication and so I looked at other barriers as well. For example, in teaching fabrication, that’s a big barrier for deaf individuals. I went and took different courses on learning fabrication. Metalworking was interesting because at the time they didn’t have good auto darkening welding helmets. They were pretty much pitch black except what you can see with the weld. It’s very hard to learn how to weld without hearing someone tell you what’s happening and what you should be doing at the same time.
C: That’s so awesome! How do you define and differentiate between inclusive design and accessible design and human centered design? It seems like terms are used a little bit interchangeably and I just want to make sure that I’m using the right terminology as I’m working through my thesis.
E: Exactly. There’s definitely a lot of overlap. The way that we’re teaching our designers and engineers at Google is that accessibility is more about applying predefined standards. The WCAG, that kind of stuff. The end goal of accessibility is to help people with disabilities. Whereas in inclusive design the end goal is to look at excluded populations and to extend that benefit to everyone. So there’s a bunch of different little differentiations. Inclusive design doesn’t just include disability, it includes all different types of exclusions. Accessibility doesn’t always require us to include the excluded population in our design. A lot of times what we see happening in accessibility is that people assume that they’re the experts and they don’t really understand what the user truly needs because they haven’t lived with that disability. Inclusive design counteracts that and says we need to be researching this population. We need to be designing with them, and bring them into that design actively. It’s a co-discovery process.
E: Yeah! My thesis was overall looking at what the barriers were for deaf individuals and fabrication and so I looked at other barriers as well. For example, in teaching fabrication, that’s a big barrier for deaf individuals. I went and took different courses on learning fabrication. Metalworking was interesting because at the time they didn’t have good auto darkening welding helmets. They were pretty much pitch black except what you can see with the weld. It’s very hard to learn how to weld without hearing someone tell you what’s happening and what you should be doing at the same time.
C: That’s so awesome! How do you define and differentiate between inclusive design and accessible design and human centered design? It seems like terms are used a little bit interchangeably and I just want to make sure that I’m using the right terminology as I’m working through my thesis.
E: Exactly. There’s definitely a lot of overlap. The way that we’re teaching our designers and engineers at Google is that accessibility is more about applying predefined standards. The WCAG, that kind of stuff. The end goal of accessibility is to help people with disabilities. Whereas in inclusive design the end goal is to look at excluded populations and to extend that benefit to everyone. So there’s a bunch of different little differentiations. Inclusive design doesn’t just include disability, it includes all different types of exclusions. Accessibility doesn’t always require us to include the excluded population in our design. A lot of times what we see happening in accessibility is that people assume that they’re the experts and they don’t really understand what the user truly needs because they haven’t lived with that disability. Inclusive design counteracts that and says we need to be researching this population. We need to be designing with them, and bring them into that design actively. It’s a co-discovery process.
C: How do I know what I don’t know? It’s easy to design for myself but it’s hard to be able to think outside the box and make sure that I’m being inclusive with my designs. What are your suggestions for making inclusive work?
E: Great question. I think the biggest thing is trying to learn how to recognize exclusion, to be able to see when it’s happening. So part of that’s learning what your bias is, and recognizing that they exist. There’s a great course by Professor Jutta Treviranus, she’s at Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU). She teaches a course called “Unlearning And Questioning’’ so you can unlearn all of your biases. You learn to question the world again with fresh eyes. That starts helping you see who’s excluded. Also, I think it’s about exposing yourself continuously to difference, because that’s how you start seeing those different and unique perspectives and experiences.
E: Great question. I think the biggest thing is trying to learn how to recognize exclusion, to be able to see when it’s happening. So part of that’s learning what your bias is, and recognizing that they exist. There’s a great course by Professor Jutta Treviranus, she’s at Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU). She teaches a course called “Unlearning And Questioning’’ so you can unlearn all of your biases. You learn to question the world again with fresh eyes. That starts helping you see who’s excluded. Also, I think it’s about exposing yourself continuously to difference, because that’s how you start seeing those different and unique perspectives and experiences.
C: Yeah that’s that makes a lot of sense, and it sounds like a really cool course. That’s been a challenge of mine: I’m able, I’m a millennial and I speak native English and so it’s hard for me to realize what I’m missing out on so that’s really helpful. I’ve seen different takes on this, but how do you approach inclusive design? If you have a problem that you are trying to solve, do you solve for one specific person or do you try and solve for everyone? What’s the direction that you take as you’re designing?
E: That also gets into the distinction between inclusive design and universal design. Universal design you’re trying to design one thing for a variety of needs and trying to include as many people as possible. But what often happens when we do that is we lose fidelity and effectiveness in our designs. Inclusive design does tend to look at one or two especially excluded populations in a certain setting or problem space, and then dive deep. So the key is trying to figure out which excluded population you should be focusing on. That’s a whole process in itself. It starts with figuring out what your problem truly is and what space it’s operating in. NPR, for example, looked to deaf people and to people with anxiety and redesigning its apps. It makes sense: if you think about it. When you see the news, you get anxious often. Usually, news is horrible, unfortunately. So, you don’t have a clear mind and that’s very similar to how someone with anxiety experiences things. So they looked to people with anxiety to try and design their apps. They also looked to people with hearing loss because they’re a very audiocentric news platform. And so that helped them rethink how they present their news.
E: That also gets into the distinction between inclusive design and universal design. Universal design you’re trying to design one thing for a variety of needs and trying to include as many people as possible. But what often happens when we do that is we lose fidelity and effectiveness in our designs. Inclusive design does tend to look at one or two especially excluded populations in a certain setting or problem space, and then dive deep. So the key is trying to figure out which excluded population you should be focusing on. That’s a whole process in itself. It starts with figuring out what your problem truly is and what space it’s operating in. NPR, for example, looked to deaf people and to people with anxiety and redesigning its apps. It makes sense: if you think about it. When you see the news, you get anxious often. Usually, news is horrible, unfortunately. So, you don’t have a clear mind and that’s very similar to how someone with anxiety experiences things. So they looked to people with anxiety to try and design their apps. They also looked to people with hearing loss because they’re a very audiocentric news platform. And so that helped them rethink how they present their news.
C: So how did you and your team actually solve that problem for NPR?
E: Users with anxiety that helped them improve their navigation and try and rethink how they prioritize certain things that they were displaying. Deciding which story should be first, which is not seen when you’re feeling anxiety, and making sure that users can see that story if they need to. With deafness, they talked to me, and my suggestion was that even if they have the podcast plus the transcript, it would be helpful to integrate the captions into the podcast. Even if it’s just audio, I still hear a little bit and I’d rather listen and read the captions at the same time: that’s a full experience. There’s a lot of people who are just losing their hearing who could benefit in a similar way. You just don’t get the same experience with a transcript.
E: Users with anxiety that helped them improve their navigation and try and rethink how they prioritize certain things that they were displaying. Deciding which story should be first, which is not seen when you’re feeling anxiety, and making sure that users can see that story if they need to. With deafness, they talked to me, and my suggestion was that even if they have the podcast plus the transcript, it would be helpful to integrate the captions into the podcast. Even if it’s just audio, I still hear a little bit and I’d rather listen and read the captions at the same time: that’s a full experience. There’s a lot of people who are just losing their hearing who could benefit in a similar way. You just don’t get the same experience with a transcript.
C: How do you go about finding excluded groups? Did individuals that felt excluded reach out to NPR, or was that their internal team thinking “maybe we need to rethink our app?” Who started the conversation and who moved it along to production?
E: Ideally you would get feedback from your users and also have your team look at the problem space that you’re in and try and identify those who would be most excluded. That’s really just like pulling apart whatever you are designing and really thinking about the foundational elements, what context and environments it will be used in, and the overall space you’re functioning in. Is it risk management, is it news? Then identifying abilities related to that and you usually you’ll come upon an excluded population. But there’s actually two ends of the spectrum: you could be really excluded, or you could be an expert. Often when you have disability, you both have a lack of something: a lack of hearing audio for example. But then you become an expert at something to make up for that lack. For me, it’s reading body language. Or for someone who’s blind, it might be wayfinding and being able to give directions in a different way. So it’s a lack and a gain.
E: Ideally you would get feedback from your users and also have your team look at the problem space that you’re in and try and identify those who would be most excluded. That’s really just like pulling apart whatever you are designing and really thinking about the foundational elements, what context and environments it will be used in, and the overall space you’re functioning in. Is it risk management, is it news? Then identifying abilities related to that and you usually you’ll come upon an excluded population. But there’s actually two ends of the spectrum: you could be really excluded, or you could be an expert. Often when you have disability, you both have a lack of something: a lack of hearing audio for example. But then you become an expert at something to make up for that lack. For me, it’s reading body language. Or for someone who’s blind, it might be wayfinding and being able to give directions in a different way. So it’s a lack and a gain.