Accessibility and inclusion in health tech: What they mean and why they matter

As stated on GOV.UK, accessibility means that people can do what they need to do in a similar amount of time and effort as someone who does not have a disability.  At Little Journey, inclusive design doesn’t end with meeting accessibility requirements. In this article, our Design Lead, Joshua Elliff, covers the key differences between accessibility and inclusion and explains how we work to prioritise both.

Josh is a human-centred designer by background. He has over ten years of experience working with scaling organisations across e-commerce, subscription services, and health tech, both in B2B and B2C. Throughout his career, Josh has seen many different approaches to accessibility—and he’s also seen how it can be overlooked, particularly in smaller organisations.

What's the difference between accessibility and inclusion?

For me, accessibility, inclusion, and usability all come together to form the approach of inclusive design.

• Accessibility is the ability to access a service or product.
• Inclusion ensures that every person—regardless of race, gender, location, language, age, or physical ability—can use and enjoy that service or product.
• Usability makes sure that the product or service is easy to use.

Inclusive design, therefore, is an approach to creating products and experiences that are accessible, understandable, and usable by as many people as possible, taking into account users’ diverse needs, backgrounds, and experiences.

What makes ‘good’ accessible design?

Good accessible design should meet four criteria. It is:

• Robust - Accessible design solutions need to be robust. It’s about creating strong systems and testing them thoroughly, with users of varying abilities.
• Creative - Designing for accessibility shouldn’t be seen as a design constraint. It shouldn’t be ‘dull’. People who might need accessible features shouldn’t suffer a lesser-designed product.
• Honest - I think accessibility is a journey, and organisations should be honest about what they offer, and honest about their blind spots. From my experience, it's better to make incremental improvements as part of an accessibility journey, rather than leaving a non-accessible product live while you shoot for the moon.
• Collaborative - Collaboration in design is key, this is especially true when designing for accessibility. There are many functions involved in creating the best solutions.

What are the challenges in designing accessible solutions?

While accessible design has technical challenges, the real challenge is in education. Good design is usable design for everyone, yet design education often overlooks this. Usability should be a standard benchmark of success for product design. You can design the slickest, most visually appealing digital experience you like, but if 20% of people struggle to use it... How successful is it?

Especially in healthcare, the stakes are higher with information access and delivery. For example, if someone is using a digital service to access treatment information – like fasting guidelines – and they don’t understand them, this can impact whether they can have their treatment or not. There’s a direct impact on patient outcomes.

How does Little Journey prioritise accessibility and inclusion in our product?

Co-creation has always been at the heart of Little Journey, and we’re excited to have launched our very own Accessibility Centre of Excellence (ACE). ACE is a dedicated group responsible for embedding accessibility into every aspect of an organization. At Little Journey, we are creating a network of passionate, knowledgeable individuals who will serve as accessibility champions across different functions. This new initiative prioritises inclusivity across the product offering, with a focus on improving accessibility for neurodivergent children and users with disabilities.

To learn more about accessibility at Little Journey visit our accessibility hub. 

To find out more about implementing Little Journey as a support solution for your hospital or paediatric trial, book a meeting with our team.