Accessible design at Action Sustainability December 2019

“Accessible design is good design” – Steve Ballmer

Designing for accessibility means to be inclusive to the needs of your users to ensure that they have the best and easiest experience possible.

Often with accessible design we are unsure of where to start, what needs are we designing for? How do we know what the needs are? How do we meet these needs through design?

Our review

At Action Sustainability, it is paramount that all our users and visitors needs are met. To ensure this, we asked our work experience student Joel, who is a wheelchair user, to review the accessibility of our office. We asked Joel to assess our offices regarding accessibility, including:

• If he experienced any difficulties
• If there was anything he would change to improve accessibility
• Any beneficial features

“Good accessible design happens when you view your design from many different perspectives or lenses” – The Art of game design

Our conclusion

The review concluded that our office design contained many positives for accessibility:

• The flooring, making it easier for Joel to manoeuvre
• Wide spaces in between desks
• Wide doorways which made it easy for Joel to enter and exit our office

The negatives that were captured included:

• Our office desks were slightly too low
• A second main door on the ground floor was heavy

As our office is in a shared office space, we will report back Joel’s feedback to our provider The Office Group (TOG) to enable improvement of accessibility across our office and working space.