Accessible vs. Inclusive Design: What’s the Difference?
At Air Design, we recognise the importance of accessible vs. inclusive design in creating meaningful experiences. Accessible design is about removing barriers for individuals of all abilities, enabling everyone to interact with spaces and wayfinding signage seamlessly. This ensures that all users, regardless of their ability, can engage with the environment easily. On the other hand, inclusive design takes a more holistic approach, integrating diverse needs into every step of the design process, ensuring that solutions work for everyone, regardless of their background or ability. This encompasses not only wayfinding solutions but also branding and the overall user experience.
Inclusive design is about embracing the full spectrum of human diversity and ensuring all individuals can access and navigate spaces. At Air Design, we believe that the integration of accessibility and inclusivity into branding, wayfinding, and design solutions helps create a welcoming environment for all users.
Below, James Brown, our Director for Growth and Practice, discusses the difference between accessible vs. inclusive design and how it shapes our approach to creating environments that consider all.
What’s the Difference Between Accessible vs. Inclusive Design?
Accessible design is all about making sure products, services, and environments are usable by everyone, regardless of their abilities. The main goal is to remove barriers so that people with varying abilities can access and use the same resources as those without disabilities. While accessibility is a crucial part of inclusive design, it’s important to remember that they are not the same thing. Accessible design focuses on meeting specific standards, whereas inclusive design takes a broader approach, helping designers remove barriers across all kinds of users. This approach includes everything from wayfinding to branding and ensuring that the user experience is positive for all.
What Does Inclusive Design Involve?
To truly embrace inclusivity, it’s important to reflect a wide range of people and perspectives in the design process. This means considering not just physical abilities, but also cultural and environmental factors. Inclusive design requires curiosity, attention to detail, and a diverse, collaborative team. At Air, we give our designers the tools and opportunities to explore new ideas, cultures, and environments as part of their personal and professional development, which is key to fostering inclusive thinking.
The Power of Collaboration
Creating truly inclusive design isn’t just about accommodating physical and cognitive differences—it’s about involving those who are often overlooked. By bringing in a wide range of voices and perspectives from the start, we can design solutions that work for everyone who interacts with, manages, or delivers the final product.
At Air, we believe that inclusive design isn’t about achieving perfection, and we’re upfront about that with our clients. No design can fully capture every human need, but by listening carefully and considering diverse perspectives, we get closer to creating experiences that feel meaningful to more people.
Moving Forward: Inclusivity Beyond Accessibility
To avoid the common pitfalls of inclusivity, it’s important to recognise and address our unconscious biases—those hidden stereotypes we might have about different groups of people. This isn’t always easy, but there are ways to tackle these issues. One of the most effective methods is to include a variety of voices in the design process from the very beginning.
In the past, inclusive design has often focused on visual or mobility impairments, particularly in areas like wayfinding. But today, wayfinding is seen as much more than just signage—it’s part of a brand’s identity and plays a key role in placemaking. As this understanding has evolved, so has the need to rethink inclusive design. We’re now moving from designing for people to designing with people, which helps us avoid assumptions and instead address real needs.
As we continue to grow and learn in this field, our commitment to diversity, collaboration, and empathy remains central to our approach. Only by working together can we create designs that truly benefit everyone.