Inclusive design is an absolutely vital component in open and distributed learning. The evolution of the internet and technology as a whole has enabled us to learn in new ways, from new sources, in new places. However, there are an incredible amount of unique learners who all have different preferences for their ideal learning environments. If these new ways of learning aren’t customizable or able to be tailored to a particular person’s preferences, then they could be deemed largely useless to a significant population.

Considering cognitive needs with regards to user interface options is of utmost importance. All the time and expertise in the world could be dedicated to developing a thorough and exhaustive curriculum of content for a course, but if a student cannot interface with it, it becomes significantly less useful. The accessibility options used by FLOE, and in particular, the ‘First Discovery Tool’, should be a shoe-in for the design of any educational resource. With the First Discovery Tool, a user can quickly and easily tailor a resource’s display to their ideal preferences, allowing them to easily interact with the content right from the start. Building upon this, the ‘Portable preferences’ feature within the ‘Preference Management Tools’ is an incredible addition to making the content accessible for the user. Technology has evolved to the point where we are all using multiple devices in our daily lives – this set of features gives the user the ability to save their preferences, and carry them over across resources and devices – this allows them to have a set of accessibility preferences that will automatically apply whether they are on their laptop, phone, or any other device. This is huge for those that might find it difficult to go through the process of finding their ideal UI over and over again.

Online privacy has been a huge topic in current events, with constant stories of major corporations and web platforms misusing customer/client data. It is of utmost importance to anyone using technology, so it should also be of utmost importance when considering inclusive design. As many users may have difficulty understanding user agreements or why they exist, language used in any kind of user agreements in an educational resource should be kept plain and easy to understand, with clear instructions on how to agree, disagree, or revoke permissions. When designing for privacy, only data that is absolutely necessary should be collected from the user, and they should have full control over what is collected and how.

The concept of the ‘Inclusive design paradox’ is something that seems like it would be incredibly important and a large challenge to overcome, but is a concept that I’m having trouble grasping the full scope and impact of. I understand that with any change you make to be inclusive, you potentially fragment your user base more, and the goal is to prevent this from happening. It seems like the impacts of any change, especially in a political system like education, can be so far-reaching and significant that it’s difficult to see how this problem is tackled and where exactly it ends.

The idea of ‘Inverse Effects’ (located on the linked page) was something I also had trouble coming to terms with. It seems odd that the degree to which an organization or individual excelled in good design, the more design neglected those who relied on good design. It seems like this shouldn’t happen, as design expertise should lend itself to an understanding of why certain design is good. I suppose though that maybe it is a sort of ‘tunnel vision’ that produces this problem – certain aspects of what is believed to be good design get focused on, and as a result, other things that should be considered get put on the shelf.

One question I had after going through the module is: how do people involved in inclusive design determine who to design for? Obviously, the amount of people that can benefit from inclusive design is significant with an incredible amount of unique situations, and it would be almost impossible to consider all of them. So, what is the threshold? How uncommon does a particular physical or learning difficulty have to be for designers to decide that it’s not an efficient use of time to consider it in their work?