Not a Niche — a Majority

Accessibility is often treated as a requirement aimed at a small minority. The numbers say otherwise. A large share of the population loses visual acuity with age, loses grip strength, or has difficulty with fine finger movements. Add temporary and situational conditions — a wrist in a cast, one arm holding a baby, work gloves, bright sun, a dark room, a noisy shop floor — and it becomes clear that a product requiring excellent eyesight and two free hands excludes a large part of its own market, at least some of the time.

The principle behind inclusive product design is not to add a special edition for some users. It is to widen the range in which the ordinary product works. The result is almost always better for everybody: a large button is easier for people who had no difficulty either, and high contrast helps in direct sunlight.

Practical Design Principles

Never rely on a single sense

Confirmation shown only by a green LED is invisible to a user who cannot distinguish it; confirmation given only by a beep is lost in a noisy environment. Two or three channels — visual, audible, haptic — solve both cases at once, and a vibration motor is one of the cheapest components on the board.

Never rely on color alone

Red versus green is the most common status distinction in products and also the one a meaningful share of men cannot reliably see. Add a shape, a symbol, a distinct position, or a blink pattern — not just a hue.

Large targets, low force

Big buttons, adequate spacing between them, and actuation forces that do not require a strong pinch or a firm twist. These are numbers, not intentions, and they come out of measured population data — see our guides to ergonomics in product design and anthropometry in product design, where the rule is to design force limits for the weakest user in your intended range rather than the average one.

One-handed operation

A product that needs two hands for its primary action is more restrictive than it looks. Where the mechanism allows, design so the main function can be completed with one hand — and preferably with either hand, since left-handed use is routinely forgotten in trigger and latch placement.

Readable text

Adequate size, high contrast against the background, and a plain typeface. Light gray text on white looks refined in a rendering and is unreadable on a physical product in a kitchen at night. Molded-in text with no color contrast is worse still.

Error tolerance

Undo where possible, confirmation before irreversible actions, and physical prevention of wrong connections — asymmetric connectors, keyed housings, plugs that only fit one way. This principle serves safety as much as accessibility, and it overlaps directly with the requirements covered in product safety testing requirements.

The Companion App Is Part of the Product

A connected product is usually controlled from a phone, which means its accessibility is decided in software as much as in plastic: support for the operating system's text-size setting, labels that screen readers can announce, sufficient contrast, touch targets large enough to hit reliably, and no dependence on complex multi-finger gestures. Web and app accessibility guidelines (the WCAG levels, widely referenced in the US) are the practical checklist here. Do not make the app the only path — a product that can complete basic setup and core operation without a phone serves far more users, a decision worth making early as discussed in does your product need an app.

What It Returns Commercially

  • A larger market — particularly older buyers, who hold significant purchasing power in home, health and safety products and who abandon products that fight them.
  • Institutional and public procurement — public bodies and large institutions in the US are generally required to consider accessibility in purchasing, and products that cannot answer those questions get filtered out of bids.
  • Lower support cost — a clear product generates fewer service calls, fewer returns, and fewer one-star reviews describing confusion rather than defects.
  • Requirement compliance — in medical devices and equipment for public use, usability for the full intended user population is part of the requirements themselves rather than a nice-to-have; see medical device usability engineering.

One clarification, since this area is often misread: accessibility law in the US (the ADA, Section 508 and state equivalents) is a legal matter, and Projects House is an engineering firm, not a law firm. This article is educational only. If a specific legal obligation applies to your product or your buyers, get that answer from counsel — what we can do is design the product so the answer is easy.

Interface Choices Matter More Than They Look

A flat touch surface with no tactile landmarks is elegant and, for some users, unusable — no edges to find by feel, no click to confirm, and no operation with gloves on. Physical controls give position and feedback for free. The full trade-off, including cost and sealing, is covered in physical buttons vs touchscreen. A common good compromise is a touchscreen for depth plus one or two physical controls for the primary actions.

Packaging and Instructions — the Forgotten Part

A perfectly accessible product still fails at the moment the package will not open or the instructions cannot be read. Three easy fixes:

  • Package opening. Rigid sealed plastic that requires scissors is a genuine barrier and an injury source. A pull tab, a perforation, or a simple carton is better and often cheaper — see product packaging design.
  • Readable instructions. Dense small type on a folded leaflet does not get read. A large sheet, numbered steps, clear line drawings and real contrast do.
  • Simple first-run setup. Every additional step loses users. A setup that can be completed without an account or an app, even at a basic level, widens the audience substantially.

Test at the Edges, Not the Middle

Inclusive design is verified, not asserted. Recruit test participants at the edges of your intended range — older users, users with reduced grip strength, left-handed users, users wearing gloves — rather than colleagues in their thirties. Simple simulations help too: try the product wearing thick gloves, with petroleum jelly smeared on safety glasses, or in a dim room. Structure the session as described in user testing with a prototype, and watch what people do rather than asking whether they like it.

Design the Range In From the Start

Widening the usable range is nearly free at concept stage and expensive after tooling, because button size, contrast, force and one-handed operation are geometry decisions, not settings. If you want your product to work for the whole market rather than the easiest slice of it, describe it to us through the contact form and we will build the accessibility requirements into the specification.