The idea of the “average” user is holding design back. When you embrace edge cases, you create better experiences for everyone.
At the turn of the 19th century, an Italian inventor named Pellegrino Turri was working on solving a problem. His friend, the Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano was blind, yet she wanted to be able to write legible letters by herself. It was a tricky problem to solve. How to make sure she could write legibly without seeing? As tricky as it was, the problem was also equally niche.
Literacy rates in general were low at the time, and of the small number of people in high society who did write letters, you might imagine that many could afford to hire a servant or a scribe to write for them should they wish. Nevertheless, Turri persisted until he had created a machine that allowed the countess to stamp letters in order onto a page.
He had invented one of the first working prototypes of the typewriter, a breakthrough widely credited with being crucial for the development of further typewriters and keyboards.
Had Turri focused on the wishes of the majority of letter writers at the time rather than his blind friend, he may still have invented a breakthrough product, perhaps something like a new kind of pen, but I also might not be typing up this article on my keyboard.
The concept of accessible design is nothing new. Ensuring the products you build are usable, accessible, by people with differing needs to the majority is widely considered to be foundational to good product design. Yet many teams still frame discussions about building accessibly around a checklist.
-
Add alt text
-
Ensure compatibility for screen readers
-
Check your color contrast ratios…
But if we look closer at a lot of the products and technologies that have changed how we live and work, often they were intentionally and exclusively designed for specific edge cases and people with disabilities, not as an adaptation or a layer on top of something already designed for a majority. Closed captions, voice assistants, dark modes, even touch screens are all innovations born from a need to include those that were previously left out, and are now indispensable to millions.
An open secret within design is that it’s often done with an imaginary person in mind. The “average user”. Someone with perfect vision and hearing, fine motor skills, a fast internet connection, perfect attention, and no doubt a perfect smile and blemish free skin too.
If we look closer at a lot of the products and technologies that have changed how we live and work, often they were intentionally and exclusively designed for specific edge cases
The truth is, nobody fits this description all the time. We all drift in and out of edge cases depending on context. You might have perfect vision, but try reading a phone screen under the glare of direct sunlight. You might have a great attention span, until you’re trying to order something online with kids running around with uncapped marker pens in the background. Accessibility is less about designing for a rigid “them”, and more about designing for the different versions of us that exist throughout a day.
Designing for edge cases and treating accessibility as an opportunity, rather than a tick-box exercise, from Pellegrino Turri and the typewriter, to the invention of closed captions, is where some of the best innovations of the past century have happened. This thinking makes products more resilient, more flexible, and ultimately more successful.
Accessibility is less about designing for a rigid “them”, and more about designing for the different versions of us that exist throughout a day.
Many major shifts in design, from responsive web to dark mode to voice interaction, started as a response to a minority of users who were previously excluded. The future of tech, from wearables to voice interfaces and AI, will provide the same opportunities for inclusion and innovation at the edges. When you design for the edges, you make better products and experiences for everyone.