As an accessibility researcher, I have noticed that some of the best work comes when there are people with disabilities on the design and development team, contributing to all aspects of the design and implementation, not just as participants in user studies. I call this strong engagement by users design for user empowerment, meaning, in its strongest sense, that the users of the technology are empowered to solve their own accessibility problems. Here, I will try to explain, mostly using examples, why this approach is so powerful.

Although I am not disabled, I am
very fortunate to have lived around
disabled people my entire life. My
parents were deaf college graduates
and successful professionals. I learned
from them that disability is not a
tragedy, but rather simply part of the
diversity of life. I also learned from
them the power of technology to be
transformational, not in any kind of
medical sense but in a purely social
sense. When they and their friends
got T T Ys, surplus Western Union
Teletypewriters attached to acoustic
modems, in the early 1970s, they
could finally communicate easily at a
distance with friends and colleagues
around the country by typing, or
what we now call texting or instant

Insights

→ It is important for designers of technology for people with disabilities to engage with people with disabilities to achieve the most usable designs.

→ Better yet is empowering people with disabilities to design and build the technologies themselves.

→ Two features of design for user empowerment are self-determination and technical expertise.

Design for User
Empowerment
Richard E. Ladner, University of Washington
INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG 24 INTERACTIONS MARCH–APRIL2015
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