Ableist design: challenging systemic norms
Because we’re products of a system that excludes certain people, it’s surprisingly easy to do the same. Unless we’ve experienced exclusion or someone has pointed it out to us. Gradually, this exclusion seeps into design, and not only through inaccessible interfaces.
Ableist design shows up in the user needs we forget to anticipate, who we don’t invite for user research, and how we deprioritise tasks of a project.
This was the starting point for my talk at Paris Web in September 2025. I spoke about exclusion, capitalism, perfectionism, and the strange machine that makes us repeat society’s flaws through design. No matter what good intentions we have.
Ableist society, ableist design?
Before looking for solutions, we need to understand the context we design in. 20 years after the French disability law of 11 February 2005, I found myself wondering why accessibility still needs defending. Maybe, like me, you’ve been thinking that:
- progress in accessibility is painfully slow,
- 100% accessibility is an illusion,
- capitalism prioritises money over people anyway,
- this must be the eight-thousandth time you’ve reported a heading level issue.
Caught in a relentless machine, we’re pushed to make design profitable before making it useful to people.
But I believe there’s still hope and would like to offer, in my own modest way, a few ideas to make progress despite the system we’re up against.
In an ableist society, do we inevitably create ableist design? To answer the question, I’ll sketch a map throughout this text. Together we’ll look at:
- the systems and ideologies that shape us,
- how they manifest,
- where they apply,
- and most importantly, what we can do about it.
This article doesn’t aim to answer every question in such a vast subject. But I hope it helps you start reflecting on it, or push the reflection further.
Before that, though, let’s start with a bit of vocabulary.
Definitions
What is ableism?
Ableism is expecting Disabled people to adapt to a society designed by and for non-disabled people, even when the system works against them.
That said, I know several Disabled people who are tired of the conversations around ableism. They’d rather focus on accessibility itself. But to me, these are two sides of the same coin.
The lack of accessibility is a symptom of ableism, just as street harassment is a symptom of patriarchy. Like patriarchy, ableism is an oppressive system that targets a group of people: Disabled people rather than women. That’s not to say Disabled women can’t be targeted by both systems.
Internalised ableism
This system of oppression is especially powerful because it infiltrates everything, even how Disabled people see themselves.
In Ratatouille, Rémy dreams of becoming a chef. But because he’s a rat, he’s internalised the idea that it’s not for him. Society has taught him that rats don’t belong in professional kitchens. As a result, he hides and limits himself, even though he’s perfectly capable.
Internalised ableism works in the same way. It’s when a disabled person takes on norms that work against them. It might mean forcing themselves to come to the office despite the pain, refusing an adjustment for fear of bothering their colleagues, or downplaying their difficulties to seem 'like everyone else'.
It’s the little voice in your head that says, 'It’s my fault if I’m struggling, so I should adapt.' In those moments, we reproduce exclusion, but against ourselves. We stop asking for what we need and keep up the illusion that the system doesn’t have to change.
How the system shapes our reflexes
Systemic norms are the invisible rules of the system we belong to. More often than not, they reinforce inequality.
For example, we tend to value being physically present at work. As a result, people who struggle to travel or stay focused in group settings are left out. Yet because this is such a strong social expectation, questioning it seems unthinkable.
Another example: cutting costs at all costs — one of the cornerstones of our capitalist society. We act as if money should fall from the sky, like it’s Christmas every day. This idea also goes unchallenged, because it’s what keeps the system alive.
First hypotheses
When I was trying to understand why accessibility still isn’t a given, my first thought was: 'Do we just not care?'
In reality, what I see most are people who feel uncomfortable: hesitating over the right words and avoiding questions for fear of saying the wrong thing. I also see people holding back and hiding their difficulties. In short, I see a lot of discomfort on both sides.
That discomfort isn’t random; it’s fuelled by ignorance. When we don’t understand something well, it’s normal to feel uncomfortable. That doesn’t make you a bad person.
But this ignorance also leads to inaccessible design. Because if we don’t know we need to do things in a certain way, we simply don’t do them.
Debunking common misconceptions
To address that lack of awareness, I spend a lot of time debunking common misconceptions.
For example, I often hear ‘Our users don’t have disabilities.’ I explain that many people are still waiting for a diagnosis because getting medical appointments takes time, or is simply impossible in certain areas. And let’s not forget that most disabilities aren’t written on people’s faces.
As a result, we often underestimate how many people are affected. Yet in France alone, there are up to 18.2 million Disabled people.
By challenging misconceptions, we can indirectly improve accessibility. Once we understand the scale of the issue, it becomes much easier to want to be part of the solution.
Defending accessibility together
One day, I was talking to someone who thought accessibility efforts weren’t worth it if 'only a few people are affected'. Later, a colleague who’d overheard our conversation told me: 'I’m so glad you were there. I wanted to speak up too but I didn’t know what to say.'
She wanted to defend accessibility, but she didn’t know how.
Accessibility: play your cards right
That’s when I thought I should share those arguments with anyone who could become an ally, so we can defend accessibility together.
So I turned them into a card game, because nothing unsettles ableism quite like a game of Happy Families.
The idea is simple. You draw a ‘myth' card — for example: 'Accessible design ruins aesthetics'. Then you look for the matching 'argument' cards to debunk it.
One of them might say: 'Several WCAG criteria are actually good UX practices, like explaining how to correct an input error.' Which, as you’ll agree, doesn’t harm design in the slightest.
The game currently exists only in French, and you can download it for free. If I get enough requests for an English version, I might make one. You can sign up to be notified when it becomes available.
Encouraging effort over perfection
Through my workshops and conversations, I’ve learned to pace my efforts, if only for the sake of efficiency. Because people need time to get used to what you’re saying.
If you’re a designer, it’s a bit like progressive disclosure, but with people. The idea isn’t to pour out everything you know on a topic you’re obsessed with. That might feel intimidating for people around you if that’s all you ever talk about.
If you choose your moments and your audience well, whether you’re an accessibility specialist or not, you’ll avoid falling into judgement or frustration.
I’ve noticed that frustration often comes up among accessibility specialists, and it always makes me wonder. Imagine if doctors did the same and got angry because people keep falling ill every winter. That would make no sense, so why accept it around accessibility?
Yes, there are still plenty of people for whom accessibility is brand new. And yes, we often have to repeat the same things. But it doesn’t matter where people start, as long as they start somewhere.
Perfectionism
This tendency to judge isn’t just a matter of personality or profession. It also comes from a deeply capitalist idea: that constant growth and flawless performance will lead to a perfect world. In other words, a world without disability.
Capitalism, ableism and perfectionism feed off one another.
If you’re a perfectionist, it’s not just because you’re naturally demanding. It’s because the system we live in makes us believe failure is unacceptable.
To avoid criticism, we’re expected to understand everything instantly, never make spelling mistakes, never say our knees hurt, and never ask someone to repeat what we didn’t hear.
And because that’s what’s expected of us, we naturally expect it from others too.
But that’s not realistic. It’s not human. We rarely end our lives in perfect health, and that’s entirely natural.
The utopia of bodies and minds
Behind perfectionism lies a kind of utopia about how strong our bodies and minds should be.
Much of the world is also structured as though everyone is physically strong, as though all bodies are ideally shaped, as though everyone can walk, hear and see well, as though everyone can work and play at a pace that is not compatible with any kind of illness or pain, as though no one is ever dizzy or incontinent or simply needs to sit or lie down.
— Susan Wendell, Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability (Hypatia, 1989)
That’s why Disabled people aren’t 'others', they’re 'us'. It’s just a question of when. Because if the system only values non-disabled bodies, what happens to us as we age? It’s a valid question, but one that needs to be handled with care.
Accessibility is, first and foremost, for Disabled people
When we defend accessibility by saying it benefits everyone, we risk erasing the people it’s actually meant for. It’s a bit like saying that diversity benefits white people. We do not speak out against police violence to boost team creativity, but to defend the rights of marginalised people.
The same goes for disability. We shouldn’t defend accessibility just for our 'future selves', but for those who need it right now.
Productivity or productivism
If our system doesn’t accept disability or imperfection, it’s because it expects each of us to produce, no matter the cost. Not much has changed since Chaplin’s Modern Times. We still confuse productivity with productivism:
- Productivity means doing better with less, without negative consequences for anyone.
- Productivism means producing more, whatever the cost.
Anything that slows down production is seen as a problem. Accessibility gets pushed aside because it 'wastes time'. So we ship before audits, design without user research, and tick boxes just to move faster.
A vicious circle
If we go back to our map, capitalism still sits at the centre, fuelling perfectionism, ableism and productivism. This vicious circle shows up everywhere: in society, our organisations and design practices.
Each of these systems and ideologies reinforces the others, creating a chain reaction.
To make things worse, we lack shared knowledge. Most people in design or tech have never been trained in accessibility. That gap trickles down into our everyday tools, public policies, design choices, and even how we measure the quality of a product.
Examples of ableism
Ableism in society
I could give you a long list of how ableism shows up in society:
- forced institutionalisation,
- inclusive schools with no resources,
- repeated delays in accessibility regulations,
- Disabled people being treated as people to be cared for rather than people with rights,
- and constant pressure to appear 'normal'.
But I’m not here to be a downer so I won’t talk about it. Instead, I’ll point you towards the work of Charlotte Puiseux, especially her latest book co-written with Chiara Kahn, Plutôt vivre.
When design becomes ableist
Influenced by the society it serves, design also tends to prioritise non-disabled people. We design for them first, then wonder how to make it work for 'everyone else'.
And I say 'everyone else' because that can include any group that faces discrimination. Disability isn’t the only form of exclusion.
Earlier, I mentioned how capitalism and ableism together fuel perfectionism. When you mix capitalism with design, what you get instead is a lack of accessibility.
The Figma Sites case
Let’s take a recent example that shows how ableism shows up in our tools. At Config 2025, Figma introduced a new product for publishing designs directly to the web: Figma Sites.
Accessibility specialist Adrian Roselli wrote about it:
Do not publish your designs on the web with Figma Sites … Unless you want to fail all the WCAGs, create litigation risk, close off opportunities in Europe, engage in reputational harm, and oh yeah, throw up barriers to your customers and users.
So why did Adrian write that? He ran automated accessibility tests on the Config event website. These tools only give a first impression of accessibility issues, not full compliance, but they’re good indicators. And as Adrian said to me, he wasn’t about to do a full audit for free.
Capitalism works both ways.
The results? Around 200 WCAG errors just on the homepage:
- low colour contrasts,
- frames with no accessible name,
- images without alternatives, and so on.
Of course, Figma Sites is just a tool. As professionals, we know the limits of our tools. We know how to fix, bypass or avoid them when needed. But you can’t deny the message it sends: accessibility is optional.
And I’m not only thinking about the Disabled people who won’t have access to those sites. I’m also thinking about junior designers, design students, and anyone learning their craft — designers who think they can skip constraints that their future employers will expect them to know about.
Unless that’s just a conspiracy from my clients in France.
And let’s not forget small businesses that don’t have a team of 150 designers. For them, it’s tempting to take the easy route, especially without the knowledge or means to do better. And that, I think, is deeply dishonest.
Prioritising aesthetics over usefulness
This whole story made me think about the different kinds of designers out there, and what we mean when we talk about 'good design'.
In the design world, there are UX designers, often with backgrounds in psychology or marketing. Others come from graphic design or art direction. And then there are the slightly lost souls like me, who somehow ended up in design after working in film.
Each designer works from their own experience, values, and idea of what makes good design. For some, it’s first and foremost about aesthetics, 'making things pretty', as some like to say. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But let me offer a simple analogy.
When you choose a sofa for your living room, you think about your needs. If you have no pets, no children, and you’re not particularly clumsy, you can probably afford a beige, non-washable corduroy sofa. In short, a beautiful sofa.
But if, like me, you live with a husky who loves a good wrestle on the sofa, you’ll need to adjust your criteria. I need something sturdy and washable because that’s real life. Maybe not yours if you’ve still got a grip on your household, but it’s definitely what mine looks like.
We make choices based on our needs, not just on looks. Even as designers.
When we create digital services, the same logic applies. Let’s remember the three U’s:
- useful,
- used,
- usable.
Especially when you’re designing something like a medical booking flow or a food delivery app. No one needs a 'wow effect' to order groceries. Or if you really want that, fine, just don’t make accessibility an afterthought.
The Awwwards case
Talking about the 'wow effect', I can’t help thinking of Awwwards (with three W’s). It’s a site that celebrates designers and developers by rewarding 'the best of the web'.
The nominated sites are always stunning, there’s no denying that. But it made me wonder: how are they actually evaluated? Their scoring system is based on four criteria:
- Design – 40%
- Usability – 30%
- Creativity – 20%
- Content – 10%
As a UX designer, these criteria make very little sense to me. If 'design' isn’t 'usability', then what exactly is it? Art direction? But they already have a creativity score. And if 'content' isn’t part of 'design', then what is design?
Something else is missing too. There’s no mention of accessibility, or even sustainable design. Are they hidden inside 'usability'? Hard to tell. The only accessibility guidelines I found on their site were buried in a Google Docs for developers.
So I decided to run a few tests myself. I used accessibility checkers on the three most recent award-winning websites. The results?
- The first one didn’t even load,
- The second one blocked code inspection entirely,
- The third one had 171 contrast errors on its homepage alone.
It’s hard to understand what’s being rewarded there.
And again, I can’t help thinking about the message this sends to designers. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about perfection or moaning because I don’t have an Awwward myself.
It’s about reminding ourselves not to lose sight of the point. Design is for people, not to impress other designers. And that goes for your portfolio too.
Still, this isn’t a call-out. I’m not interested in pointing fingers at imperfection. As I’ve said before, that approach is counterproductive. Quite the opposite in fact: I think there’s a real opportunity here. An opportunity to show that beautiful design can also be accessible design.
An opportunity to seize
What I find exciting is imagining how design and the design community could strengthen one another.
Imagine the impact of a collaboration between designers, each bringing their own expertise. I like to believe in the positive influence that could have within our industry. A space where art and design truly work hand in hand.
Let’s dare to dream of beautiful, accessible, and sustainable websites. A list worthy of Paris Web’s 21st anniversary, perhaps. Because behind that list, we’d be helping to redraw a small piece of collective justice together.
What can we do? Practical actions
Now that the scene is set, let’s look at what we can actually do to create change, without feeling like we’re chasing an impossible goal.
Ask more questions
The first thing you can do is ask more questions. It’s a simple starting point which costs nothing.
When I joined MAIF, a lot was already being done on accessibility: the design system was gradually becoming accessible, there was training, documentation, and so on.
But I didn’t start doing AccessibilityOps straight away. I wasn’t immediately allowed to shout ‘down with ableism’ in the corridors. The approach you take makes all the difference.
To get there, for quite a while, all I did was ask questions. I wanted to understand how things worked, and why, before forming an opinion. Shocking, I know.
For example, instead of saying to a designer, 'I hope you remembered to annotate the alt texts', I’d ask, 'How do you make sure developers have access to your annotations?'
It’s important to give people the chance to come up with their own solutions — as long as it works, it doesn’t matter if it’s not yours.
And if the person you’re talking to hasn’t considered accessibility yet, you’re less likely to put them on the defensive. Because you didn’t approach them assuming they’d done something wrong. You’re giving them the opportunity to realise there’s something to improve, without accusation. That’s really important.
When I ask an external agency, 'How do you handle accessibility in your projects?', again, it’s not about pointing out flaws. It’s about seeing if there’s a good idea I could use that I haven’t thought about.
Sharing ideas between accessibility leads, for instance, is a great approach. To move accessibility forward, we need to set egos and competition aside.
Accept temporary answers
People need time to process new ideas, especially when it comes to unlearning ableism.
If you tell your colleagues, 'Let’s all meet for breakfast tomorrow and have got rid of all our biases by then,' you’ll probably be disappointed.
Unlearning systemic norms is a bit like promising yourself you won’t turn into your parents when you get older. Easier said than done. But the answers you get in the meantime are valuable, so treat them as precious data.
I accept temporary answers because they show me where people are in their thinking and what I need to work on in my AccessibilityOps practice.
By keeping up regular conversations, no matter where someone is on their journey, I can plant new ideas without forcing change. And after a while, people can surprise you.
For example, when I first asked my colleagues if we could do inclusive research, some people claimed it was illegal to ask people about their health. This kind of personal information is indeed more sensitive in France than it is in the United States, for example.
But it’s not illegal in France either. You can ask for that information as long as you can justify the approach. But in reality, you don’t even need to. You can simply use the Washington Group’s questions to explore ways people use a product instead of their medical conditions.
Once those assumptions are challenged, temporary answers can evolve.
My manager, for instance, eventually told me, 'Of course we can do inclusive research,' as if he’d been saying it all along. Honestly.
Challenge your assumptions with Design Fiction
Sometimes we get so focused on solving a problem that we miss the simple solutions hiding in plain sight. Turning the situation upside down can help us see things differently.
You can do this with a method called Design Fiction. It’s a design practice that explores the consequences of a possible future or change. In accessibility work, you could use a dystopian workshop, also known as the worst-case scenario exercise.
Instead of asking, 'How can we make this service better?', we ask, 'What would guarantee that it fails completely for Disabled people?'
It’s a simple exercise that helps us challenge our assumptions and imagine ideas we wouldn’t normally consider.
I haven’t tried this method myself yet, but I’ve heard about it in HR teams working in Diversity & Inclusion. Some of them even survived! It seems like a simple way to bring out new perspectives, like 'what if I simply asked people what they need?'. Truly shocking, I know.
Do inclusive research
User research is essential, and there’s no reason to exclude Disabled people from your research panels.
If you’d like practical advice about conducting inclusive user research, I recommend reading Gwenaelle Brochoire's 12 steps for inclusive research done right. But if your organisation isn’t ready for that yet, there are still things you can do.
Desk research
You can start with desk research, for example through interviews. That might mean reading testimonials, or talking directly with Disabled people.
For about a year, I’ve been interviewing Disabled people to understand how they use the web and where they face barriers. I’ve been publishing these conversations on my blog, along with practical tips for product teams in a newsletter.
These conversations can be challenging but deeply insightful, although they don’t replace actual user research.
Proper inclusive user research
As a UX designer, I can only encourage you to run proper tests with Disabled people. Ideally people who don’t work for your organisation.
We don’t ask people working in tech to evaluate digital services because it would skew the results. So there’s no reason to make an exception when it comes to accessibility.
And that’s the limitation of my own interviews: most of the people I’ve spoken to so far are digital professionals.
I realised that when I spoke with Charlotte Puiseux — a researcher, philosopher and psychologist, and the author of De chair et de fer. She writes about what it means to live in an ableist society as a Disabled woman.
Talking with Charlotte taught me things I’d never considered before. Because she isn’t familiar with the usual workarounds that digital professionals rely on, she ends up facing far more barriers.
For instance, she told me why she avoids social media:
I feel like it’s an intrusion, as if people might come into my home when I post something. It scares me because I don’t know who will see what I share.
She knows, in theory, that she could set privacy controls but she doesn’t know how to use them. She also told me about her fatigue with online hostility, a violence she already experiences in the real world.
In the street, people constantly ask if she’s ill and why, as if her disabled body belonged to everyone. And the same thing happens online. Strangers ask deeply personal questions, the kind no one would ever ask someone with an invisible disability.
All this explains why Charlotte chooses to stay away from social media, and that conversation really stayed with me. It made me realise that we can’t afford to wait for perfect compliance before we start addressing ableism in design.
Adopt an anti-ableist stance
If people don’t feel safe using our products or services, compliance alone won’t change their experience of exclusion.
We need to tackle both issues at the same time.
Full accessibility means more than meeting compliance standards; it’s about creating spaces that are genuinely welcoming and respectful — compliant and anti-ableist.
Take the example of an event registration form. It’s not enough to say, 'If you have special requirements, please email us.' Of course, the form should meet accessibility standards, but one does not replace the other. You can also offer clear options:
- Sign language interpretation,
- Quiet space,
- Subtitles or captions, etc.
Don’t make people write to ask whether there will be stairs, Wi-Fi or power sockets in the building.
That’s exactly what Audrey Melotti and I discussed when we talked about normalising disability.
Normalise the needs of Disabled people
We need to normalise people’s needs, including those of Disabled people. These aren’t 'special' needs; they’re simply human needs.
Everyone has needs, including you. To read this article, you’re probably not standing on your head or balancing on one foot. That would be quite something. You’ve just done what most people do: you’ve adjusted to your needs. Normalised, human needs.
That’s why I’m grateful for conferences like Paris Web, which make a real effort to keep their events accessible. It’s at those events that I’ve met the most Disabled people, simply because they could come.
Step outside your echo chamber
We still need to step outside our echo chambers, the spaces where everyone tends to think the same way.
If you’ve ever attended Paris Web, you have probably noticed that most people are already convinced about the importance of accessibility. To reach a wider audience, we need to talk about it elsewhere, for example at conferences that focus on AI without ever questioning its social impact.
We need the perspectives from Paris Web to be heard in those spaces, just as we need to learn from those events in return. It works both ways.
The question is not so much what we can do for designers who know little about accessibility, but what we can do together, as a movement and a community. Because a community should be diverse, including in its opinions.
I also believe we need to structure our efforts to make accessibility a key part of our practice.
AccessibilityOps, a strategic approach to accessibility
AccessibilityOps is an approach that helps improve accessibility strategically and in an anti-ableist way. It works like DesignOps, connecting people, tools and processes, but with a focus on accessibility.
What matters is giving people the skills to learn how to learn. Not everyone has mastered the subject, and it’s not a problem. As I mentioned earlier, we need to encourage effort, challenge assumptions, normalise disability, and give visibility to people with lived experience.
One example of AccessibilityOps could be analysing the accessibility errors that appear in your audits. Let’s say you notice that the most frequent issue is about heading levels. What could you learn from that?
Perhaps designers are not annotating their mock-ups properly. Fair enough. But are they trained to do it correctly? And do developers actually use those annotations? These are all questions you need to answer if you want to guarantee quality throughout the entire workflow.
Understand how exclusion works
So what next? All this may sound great on paper. But in the end, it’s your colleagues who will decide whether or not to make accessibility a priority, and how they choose to do it.
Expecting people to do this work consistently and correctly depends on how well they understand ableism. That is what Devon Persing writes about in The Accessibility Operations Guidebook.
We can only start breaking down exclusion once we understand how it works. Otherwise, even with the best intentions, we can still get it wrong. For instance, chasing compliance before talking to real people rarely leads anywhere good, as I’ve said earlier.
Aim for improvement, not perfection
The last thing I want to say is that we should aim for improvement rather than perfection.
As Meryl Evans says, progress can come in zigzags, in big leaps, or very slowly. It doesn’t matter. It is still progress. It can feel discouraging at times, but remember that some of that pressure comes from the system, not from your own shortcomings.
In this system, we’re expected to look like spotless products on a shelf: perfect smiles, polished edges, and certainly no dog hair on the sofa.
Yet if you talk to people around you, you’ll see that it’s not perfection that moves you. Quite the opposite. What touches us most is when we are allowed not to be perfect. Because that is rare. And because it is fair.
For example, it can be moving when someone is granted a workplace adjustment, because we know it is not given to everyone. That sense of fairness is not systemic.
And while I’m at it, I’d like to thank my manager at MAIF — quietly, of course, so as not to ruin the flawless image you might have accidentally built of me.
Imperfection and vulnerability are, after all, part of being human. And there’s a lot we could learn from Disabled people about what that really means.
If we are not willing to listen, we cannot normalise pain, slowness or even alternatives. Because being Disabled is not necessarily negative; it is not necessarily less.
To be blind is to see differently. It is not to remove the word ‘see’ from one’s vocabulary.
Thank you to Sylvie Duchateau for teaching me that.
What kind of design do we want to defend?
Everything I’ve written so far ends up in our products and services. So I’ll leave you with this question: what kind of design do you want to defend?
Make design an act of rebellion
Your work can, and should, be an act of rebellion against bad design.
Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro was one of the first books I read when I was learning the craft. It probably had a big influence on my inner rebel.
To balance that out, I turned to something a little less divisive: the Larousse dictionary, which defines design as a discipline that aims to harmonise the human environment. That might sound vague, so I went looking for an example of design that truly brings harmony.
The Peace Bench
I came across it in Oslo, Norway. It’s the Peace Bench, which Nelson Mandela described as the best weapon for peace.
It’s a semi-circular aluminium bench that makes it impossible to sit down without sliding closer to the person next to you. A weapon that simply allows you to sit and talk.
Fellow designers, I’ll leave it to you to create a digital version. An accessible one, of course.
Change the end of the story
Design can be a lever for transforming our systems, even on a small scale. I’d like to end with the words of C. S. Lewis, who wrote:
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
Accessibility is just one of many fights for a fairer world. Let’s be the ones to change how that story ends.
The map to challenge systemic norms in design
The map is divided into four main sections:
- Manifestations of ableist design:
- Ignorance encourages discomfort and inaccessibility,
- Judgement and ignorance reinforce each other.
- Systems and ideologies:
- Capitalism, perfectionism, productivism, and ableism fuel eachother.
- Where they apply:
- Capitalism influences art and design.
- Art and design complement each other, but they are not the same.
- Design and community strengthen each other.
- Tools for anti-ableist stance:
- Methodology:
- Do inclusive research,
- Challenge mental models with Design Fiction,
- Connect people, tools and processes with AccessibilityOps.
- Collective strategies:
- Debunk misconceptions,
- Encourage effort over perfection,
- Pace yourself.
- Individual strategies:
- Progress over perfection,
- Ask more questions,
- Accept temporary answers,
- Step outside your echo chamber.
- Methodology:
These actions help dismantle inaccessibility and ignorance. They strengthen both design and community.
