This article was written by OZeWAI member Ricky Onsman.
Subtitled “How Inclusion Shapes Design”, Mismatch (MIT Press, 2018) is an enlightening guide to what inclusive design is and its benefits to both designers and users of the digital world.
I have a major quibble, though, and that is with the title.
Kat Holmes uses “mismatch” to refer to the way digital content can fail to match the accessibility needs of people with disabilities.
In my view, however, “mismatch” doesn’t represent the devastating impact that digital inaccessibility can have.
Not accommodating the digital access needs of people with physical, cognitive, sensory, and mental health conditions has often critical effects – it creates disability where it doesn’t need to exist.
Calling digital inaccessibility a “mismatch” doesn’t convey that.
I’m all for providing a fix for the problem – that’s my day job – but web, app and game owners, developers, designers and content authors do have to understand, recognize and acknowledge the problem, and commit to fixing it.
Mismatch could do with a stronger sense of that. Maybe calling it a “mismatch” is part of a softly, softly approach but in my view it’s too soft.
Digital inaccessibility is illegal, unethical, and ultimately self-defeating. Excluding people with disabilities from web content is discrimination, not a mismatch.
Having got that rant off my chest, the book as a whole is excellent. Holmes is a very experienced writer and speaker, and she communicates the value of inclusive design very well.
She’s one of the few people who provides a clear definition of inclusive design, universal design and accessibility, and why designers should be familiar with all three.
She doesn’t set impossible benchmarks for designers, and highlights challenges that designers face where they might call in an expert.
I like the way Holmes draws parallels between design issues in the analogue and digital worlds, pointing out that technology offers unprecedented opportunities to break exclusive design habits.
She emphasizes the value of diversity and interdependence in inclusive design, and the benefits of practical usability research.
And Holmes conveys this in clear, positive, instructive language with meaningful examples of how to address the “mismatch between the stated purpose of a design and the reality of who can use it.”
Overall, Mismatch is a useful, practical, and inspiring analysis of inclusive design and how to achieve it.