Fair by design: Addressing the paradox of inclusive design approaches

Abstract

Inclusive design approaches like universal design prescribe addressing the needs of the widest possible audience in order to consider human differences. Taking differences seriously, however, may imply that “the widest possible audience” is severely restricted. In confronting this paradox, we recruit Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness. Applying Rawls’ principles to universal design implies that users derive which design allows for equitable use by deliberating under a veil of ignorance concerning their own capacities or limitations. Rather than addressing everyone’s needs, being designed universally then means matching what everyone would choose under the condition sketched. Since this can hardly apply to single artefacts, we suggest considering the social distribution of usability as the proper domain of fairness in design instead. Under this reading, just design concerns how usability is distributed across relevant users. Differences in usability are acceptable if overall usability for the worst offs is maximized.

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Fair by design. Addressing the paradox of inclusive
design approaches
Matteo Bianchin & Ann Heylighen
To cite this article: Matteo Bianchin & Ann Heylighen (2017) Fair by design. Addressing the
paradox of inclusive design approaches, The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S3162-S3170
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1352822
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Design for Next
12th EAD Conference
Sapienza University of Rome
12-14 April 2017
doi: 10.1080/14606925.2017.1352822
© 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under
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Fair by design. Addressing the paradox of
inclusive design approaches
Matteo Bianchina, Ann Heylighenb*
a University of Milano-Bicocca, Dept. of Human Sciences
b KU Leuven, Dept. of Architecture, Research[x]Design
*Corresponding author e-mail: ann.heylighen@kuleuven.be
Abstract: Inclusive design approaches like universal design prescribe addressing the
needs of the widest possible audience in order to consider human differences.
Taking differences seriously, however, may imply that “the widest possible
audience” is severely restricted. In confronting this paradox, we recruit Rawls’
theory of justice as fairness. Applying Rawls’ principles to universal design implies
that users derive which design allows for equitable use by deliberating under a veil
of ignorance concerning their own capacities or limitations. Rather than addressing
everyone’s needs, being designed universally then means matching what everyone
would choose under the condition sketched. Since this can hardly apply to single
artefacts, we suggest considering the social distribution of usability as the proper
domain of fairness in design instead. Under this reading, just design concerns how
usability is distributed across relevant users. Differences in usability are acceptable
if overall usability for the worst offs is maximized.
Keywords: Fairness, Inclusive design, Justice, Universal design, Universality
1. Introduction
In the past years, the design community witnessed the development of several design approaches
aiming at inclusivity. Depending on the continent or region, these approaches are called universal
design (Mace, 1985; Preiser and Ostroff, 2001; Steinfeld and Maisel, 2012), inclusive design
(Coleman, 1994; Imrie and Hall, 2001; Coleman, Lebbon, Clarkson and Keates, 2003) or design for all
(EIDD Design for All Europe, 2004). Despite some semantic distinctions, all three approaches share a
similar purpose: to “ensure that […] products and services address the needs of the widest possible
audience, irrespective of age or ability” (Design Council, 2009). For this reason, they are henceforth
referred to as ‘inclusive design approaches’ or, in short, ‘inclusive design’. Their common purpose is
based on two premises (Clarkson and Coleman 2015: 235):
1. “there is such considerable diversity in mental and physical capability both across the
population and over the length of the life-course that the association of ‘normality’
with ‘able-bodiedness’ is neither accurate nor acceptable”;
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MATTEO BIANCHIN & ANN HEYLIGHEN
2. “disability arises from interactions with the surrounding environment that are
amenable to design and structural interventions, and not inherently from capability
levels, health status, or associated degrees of impairment”.
Characteristic of these inclusive design approaches is their utopian character. The crux is that it
seems impossible to really design for “everyone”. On the one hand, human differences are too wide
to be taken into account in all their varieties. On the other hand, it is reasonable to expect that trade-
offs are the normal case. Designing to the benefit of the needs connected with a specific kind of
capacity is likely to entail some cost with respect to the satisfaction of other needs – what is good for
someone who is blind may be different from what is good for someone in a wheelchair. Moreover,
given that a moderate scarcity of resources is the normal condition of human societies, choices are
likely to be made among concurrent demands. Thus, rather than reconciliation with the diversity of
human needs, the output of adopting the stance of inclusive design looks to be conflict. It will always
turn out that somebody’s perspective has not been taken into account or – worse – has been
harmed. This feature of inclusive design is not only clearly acknowledged as suggested by the term
“possible” in the abovementioned definition, but even advanced as a determinative characteristic
(Duncan, 2007). In this context, some authors use terms like ‘‘universal designing’’ (Steinfeld &
Tauke, 2002), or ‘‘design for more’’ (Herssens, 2011), so as to capture in words the unceasing and
dynamic endeavour.
Because of this utopian character, however, critics tend to consider inclusive design approaches in
general, and universal design in particular as unrealistic, and use this as an argument not to adopt or
teach them (De Cauwer et al., 2009). The question whether universal design is realistic, however, has
to do specifically with the differences found in human needs and the moderate scarcity of resources
that is characteristic of the human condition, more than with a generic impossibility of designing for
each and everyone according to her specific needs – or better, the latter limitation depends on the
former (Heylighen, 2014; Winance, 2014). Thus the point is: to what extent is it possible to design a
product, space or service that, at the same time, allows for equitable use by everyone and respects
the diversity in people’s capacities? In this respect, inclusive design approaches seem to face a
paradoxical condition. On the one hand, they prescribe to address the needs of the widest possible
audience in order to take into account human differences. On the other hand, taking human
differences seriously seems to imply that nothing can be designed that meets the needs of everyone,
so that “the widest possible audience” may turn out to be severely restricted.
This paper therefore seeks to contribute to addressing this paradox by focusing on the question what
the utopian character of inclusive design implies for design practice. For if inclusive design taken
literally is an unattainable goal, the question arises how designers can be fair to users. In order to
answer this question we turn to the conceptual and theoretical tools provided by contemporary
theories of justice and in particular to the theory of justice as fairness of moral and political
philosopher John Rawls (1971; 1986; 1993). A similar question in fact arises in the context of
designing the principles according to which the benefits and costs of cooperation are to be
distributed among participants in a society conceived as a system of cooperation characterized by a
widespread pluralism of values and conceptions of what it is to lead a good life.
The working hypothesis is that the conceptual tools provided by Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness
may be recruited by design theory in order to confront the issue at stake. The paper’s objective is to
contribute to a theory of just design that offers a way out of the paradox of inclusive design.
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Fair by design
2. General frame
Critics have pointed at the lack of academic attention for and critical scrutiny of the overarching
principles of inclusive design approaches like universal design, their understanding, and their
placement into practice (Imrie, 2012). Exceptions to this rule include studies which confront universal
design with a critical theory paradigm (D’Souza 2004), design theory (Heylighen, 2014), design
practice (Van der Linden et al., 2016), or informational and market issues (Tobias 2003). Yet other
studies analyse how inclusivity relates to quality in design and suggest that a deliberative approach
to inclusive design can both help to understand their connection and confront the questions it raises
about the relationship between designers and users (e.g., Bianchin & Heylighen 2010, Heylighen &
Bianchin 2013).
In this respect, it is noteworthy to consider that researchers have recently stressed the relevance of
ethics and social issues to design in general, and inclusive design in particular. It has been claimed
that focusing on democracy and justice is of paramount importance to address ethical and social
issues that arise within design theory (Pols & Spahn 2015: 366). On the one hand, inclusive design
seems connected with a democratic attitude according to which all who are affected by the output of
a design process should be included in this process according to a deliberative approach to design
that is explicitly connected with the recent deliberative trend in democratic theory (Heylighen &
BIanchin 2013). On the other hand, as pointed out in the introduction, inclusive design seems faced
with a paradox that is naturally connected with a question of justice. In this sense it has been
stressed that, while design methods tend to make reference at least implicitly to the values of
democracy and justice, no reference to a specific theory of democracy and justice is made (Pols &
Spahn 2015).
We address the demand for a theoretical approach by specifying how the theory of justice can be
applied to confront the paradox of inclusive design. The point is that what we label the paradox of
inclusive design can be easily seen as raising a question of justice, as it flows from the requirement
that the demands stemming from different and potentially conflicting needs can be answered. More
specifically the very idea of designing for the largest possible audience faces two connected
problems, as it rather obviously operates in conditions of moderate scarcity of resources. The idea of
a moderate scarcity in this context is a relatively technical notion stemming from David Hume. It is
meant neither to provide a measure of the resources over which agents dispose in a specific
situation, nor to suggest a condition in which resources are subject to especially severe limitations. It
is meant to convey the rather uncontroversial view that human agency is constrained by the fact that
resources are not enough to satisfy the needs and/or desires of all agents and thus agents are likely
to compete and conflict over the allocation of goods. This is paradigmatically the condition under
which value disagreement and a conflict of interest that naturally proceeds from human differences
give rise to a demand for justice, i.e., a demand for general principles according to which conflicts
can be adjudicated in ways that can be justified to all those who will be affected (Hume 1738-49,
Rawls 1971).
The problems are appropriately identified by Simeon Keates: (a) “many users with severe functional
impairments require solutions that would hamper other users” (Keates 2015: 392) and (b) “It is often
hard to prioritize which issues are the most important to fix and, occasionally, which ones may
actually harm the overall usability and accessibility of the product” (Keates 2015: 398). Keates
stresses that, while this is difficult enough for designers where the users are homogeneous, in the
case of inclusive design, they are often very heterogeneous. Keates concludes that organizations and
designers need assistance to help prioritize the most important issues (ibid.). This is important
because it acknowledges that issues do not order themselves according to a naturally shared system
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of priorities. Individuals tend in fact to diverge about the priority that should be given to different
issues as a result of endorsing different values or conceptions of the good life. This is commonly
recognized in moral and political philosophy as the fact of pluralism. Although different readings can
be given of what the fact of pluralism amounts to, the common view is that people in a free society
tend to be committed to different and conflicting beliefs, values, and conceptions of the good life
(Rawls 1993, Habermas 1983, Gutman, Thompson 2004).
A moderate scarcity of resources and the fact of pluralism prototypically design the conditions under
which a conflict of interest gives rise to questions of justice: they require some principles to be fixed
according to which goods are distributed in a situation where conflicting claims arise about the
priority to be accorded to the satisfaction of specific needs and interests. In what follows we explore
to what extent a theory of justice as fairness provides tools to confront these issues and therefore
solve the paradox of inclusive design. We proceed as follows. First, we define justice in general
according to Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness and proceed to apply that conception to inclusive
design. Second, we analyse this approach focusing on design practice. Third, we suggest a way out of
the paradox of inclusive design by considering the distribution of artefacts in a society, instead of
single artefacts, as the domain of application for fairness in design. Finally, we conclude by
identifying four problems which arise when trying to address the paradox of inclusive design in this
way.
3. Towards a theory of just design
3.1 Justice defined
By way of first step towards a theory of just design, we define justice in general according to Rawls’
theory of justice as fairness. A good reason to look at Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness is that it
explicitly aims at justifying the principles of justice that govern the distributions of benefits resulting
from social cooperation among agents that differ in their natural talents and capacities as well as in
their social position and their conceptions of the good life.
The theoretical tools to confront the task are provided by the idea of the original position, conceived
along the lines of social contract theory as the hypothetical initial situation in which agents
collectively choose the principles according to which basic social institutions will be regulated. The
basic assumption here is that society is a system of cooperation and that social institutions
fundamentally rest on collective acceptance, as no system of cooperation that it is supported by
mere coercion or deception can be stable over time (Rawls 1971; Searle 1995, 2010). The principles
that regulate basic social institutions must be justified to those who are bound by them in order for a
system of cooperation to be stable over time.
In this context Rawls’ theory suggests that, in order to come out with a result that can be justified to
all, agents are to choose the principles of justice under a veil of ignorance that blinds the knowledge
they possess of their own natural assets and abilities, their social position, their conception of the
good, amongst others. Agents are supposedly provided with the knowledge of general facts about
psychology, society – including that of moderate scarcity – and human life. Moreover, agents are
taken to be rational in that they are endowed with a conception of the good and the capacity for
instrumental reasoning. Finally, they are generally taken to be provided with the motivation to agree
on fair terms of cooperation and to comply with them once they are in place (Rawls 1971, 1993). The
veil of ignorance just screens out the information that would lead to arbitrarily favouring a specific
party – since “we cannot reasonably expect our views to fall into line when they are affected by the
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Fair by design
contingencies of our different circumstances" (Rawls 1971: 517).
Rawls thus understands the original position as a “device of representation” designed to convert a
question of justification into a deliberative problem. The original position models the conditions
under which agents that regard themselves as free and equal are supposed to reach an agreement,
and therefore constrains what can be put forward as a good reason in deliberating the principles of
justice. It works as a constraint on deliberation insofar as it conveys an impartial and fair point of
view that expresses the self-conception of agents as free and equal rational beings (Rawls 1971,
1985; Freeman 2007; Barry 1995).
The expected result is that under this condition rational agents will chose principles that maximize
the welfare of the worst off while protecting individual freedom and a fair equality of opportunity
(Rawls, 1971; Freeman, 2007).
An important point in Rawls’ theory is that justice turns out to be defined in purely procedural terms,
since what counts as the principles is generated by a procedure that is constitutive of the correct
output. Justice, that is, is defined not independently from the procedure adopted, but rather as the
output of an independent procedure designed to tackle the problem of justification (Elgin 1996).
3.2 Justice in design practice
The second step towards a theory of just design is to analyse how Rawls’ approach to defining justice
may fare as seen from the perspective of design practice.
To achieve the purpose of inclusive design, i.e., to address the needs of the widest possible audience,
designers seek resonance between the needs of particular groups and the needs of the entire
population (Pullin & Newell 2007, Andrews 2014). Pullin and Newell (2007) describe design
resonance as a situation “where the needs of the people who have a particular disability coincide
with particular able bodied users in particular contexts”. For example, navigating sidewalks with a
trolley or pram has resonance with navigating them with a wheelchair – both benefit from curb cuts,
i.e., sidewalks flattening into the street. Similarly, communicating in a noisy environment resembles
the situation of people who are deaf or speech impaired.
Often, however, seeking resonance between the needs of particular groups and those of the entire
population is not trivial. The vantage point Rawls’ theory of justice offers in this context is rather
obvious. There is no need to decide in advance what is good for all and/or for each specific group or
individual in this case. Instead a procedure is provided from which can be derived what design is just
as a result, according to the general structure of justice as fairness (Barry, 1995; D’Agostino et al.,
2012).
If we proceed to apply this conception to inclusive design approaches like universal design, the
upshot is shifting the way “universal” is understood. To be universal for a designed artefact would
not mean that everyone has to be enabled to use it in an equitable way. This is in fact impossible,
given human differences. Yet its design can be taken to be universal if it accords to what would be
chosen by everyone under the condition sketched, that is under a veil of ignorance about their
capacities. This shifts the perspective from considering universal usability in terms of the concrete
use one can make of an artefact to considering it in terms of a specific constraint imposed on the
choice about how artefacts must be designed in order to pay equal respect to all possible users.
Fairness, however, can hardly be applied to inclusive design issues for single artefacts. Given human
differences, virtually no artefact can in fact be designed that can be used by each according to her
own specific capacity. Moreover, to design an artefact so that usability for the worst off is
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maximized, may severely restrict the usability for users with different capacities or with a different
level of capacity of the same kind. A classic example are the abovementioned curb cuts: while they
are important for people in a wheelchair and comfortable for people with a trolley or pram, they
cause problems for pedestrians who are vision impaired as they rely on a sharp curb to detect the
edge of the sidewalk. With respect to design practice, thus either fairness or universality seem to fail.
3.3 A way out of the paradox
A possible way out of the paradox of inclusive design is considering the distribution of artefacts in a
society, instead of single artefacts, as the domain of application for fairness in design. In this context,
any group, institution, relationship characterized as a system of cooperation can be counted as a
society. States, neighbourhoods, NGOs and cities can be all considered as relevant in this sense as
well as a transport system, a hospital, or the audience of a movie theatre. According to this reading,
the principles of justice apply not to the problem of designing a specific artefact in a way that
maximizes usability for the worst offs, but to a different problem: the problem of distributing
usability in a society taken as a whole, so that usability for the worst offs is maximized.
This may involve that we should accept some difference in usability provided that the solution
maximizes the results for the worst offs in general. In this sense, just design does not rest on whether
each user can use an artefact in the same way. On the contrary, it can manage the fact that some
users will get more than others by considering a solution just if and only if relative differences go
generally to the advantage of the less able or most disadvantaged.
This seems to provide a solution to what we labelled the paradox of inclusive design: inclusive design
prescribes to address the needs of the widest possible audience, yet taking human differences
seriously will severely restrict “the widest possible audience”. Shifting the understanding of
“universal” along the procedural line suggested above and focusing on the social distribution of
usability rather than on the usability of single artefacts allows for a non-paradoxical understanding of
inclusive design. According to this understanding, the apparent contradiction between the aim of
designing for the widest possible audience and that of taking difference seriously can be treated as
raising a question of justice, and confronted by a procedural conception of justice as fairness.
An important implication of this approach is that it helps clarifying the relationship between inclusive
and universal design. We can define design as “universal” if it respects the sketched procedure, and
“inclusive” according to the people involved in the relevant decision-making. Inclusivity in this case is
relocated from the condition under which people use an artefact concretely to the condition under
which people decide how usability is to be distributed. The point about inclusivity is not that all have
equal right to use the artefact, but that all should have equal right to participate in the decision
about which artefact is to be designed (Heylighen & Bianchin, 2013).
4. Conclusion
We have presented a first attempt at developing a general definition of just design and, based on this
definition, at solving the paradox of inclusive design. Our strategy has been to explore to what extent
Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness can be applied to design practice. The upshot is that a shift in the
definition of universal design is required as part of the proposed solution.
Several questions of course remain to be addressed. To start with, there are questions internal to the
very project of applying a theory of justice to design practice. A theory of justice is designed to apply
to the basic social institutions, and it is an open question whether and how much changing it will
undergo when applied to a more restricted and informal context. In the sense relevant to the task of
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Fair by design
defining what is fair in design, design practice seems to count as a social context, however. The issue
may thus bear some similarity with the task of applying justice as fairness within the family (Okin
1991).
Another problem is that of balancing justice with efficiency in this context, as just design may entail
not only a loss in efficiency but also a loss in general usability. Rawls’ theory implies that distributive
differences may be allowed only when they advantage the worst off. It is an open question in our
view whether and how far this applies to usability.
Furthermore, there may be no primary, purely instrumental features of artefacts that in design
theory play the role of primary goods in the standard theory of justice. As long as the functions for
which artefacts are designed make reference to use-plans it seems that actual capacities, knowledge
and circumstances of particular persons should be taken into account (Houkes & Vermaas 2010;
Oosterlaken, 2009; 2012). If this is true, the instrumental features of artefacts only make sense
within specific teleological contexts and there may be no way to abstract teleology away from
usability.
A final problem is how to characterize and identify the worst offs in this context. For instance, is
having difficulty to get on or off a sidewalk, as people in wheelchairs and people with a pram or
trolley may experience, worse than lacking a guideline to navigate that sidewalk for people who are
vision impaired, or the other way around?
Awaiting further analysis of these questions, the approach advanced in this paper highlights the
relationship between design practice and the social context, and more generally the relevance of
design practice to political issues - and vice-versa. It makes explicit the political implications of design
theory, which is likely to challenge prevailing understandings in this area. In addition, the approach
extends the domain of justice to the realm of design practice, which is likely to promote new
research in this domain.
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About the Authors:
Matteo Bianchin is an associate professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca. His
research focuses mainly on the Philosophy of Mind, the Philosophy of Social Science, and
Political Philosophy.
Ann Heylighen is a research professor at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) where she
co-chairs the Research[x]Design group. Her current research looks into how space is
experienced, how space is designed, and the relation between both.
Acknowledgements: the research reported in this paper received support from the
Research Fund KU Leuven in the form of a Senior Fellowship grant, grant N° SF/16/005.
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