
Inclusive Design Toolkit - sweetdreamerit
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/design/practice
======
Aldo_MX
This is a document to increase awareness about accessibility and provide
guidelines, yet the landing page fails to convey the intention of the
document.

Accessibility is about lowering barriers to people and making things actually
easier, not about making a message difficult to understand with marketing
gibberish.

Why can't a landing page, especially one about accessibility, be concise and
straight to the point?

~~~
coriny
Wow, right. When I first saw the link I thought, "Excellent, MS are
contributing some good to the world via accessibility tools". By the time I
had scanned the page, I had come to the conclusion that it was just marketing
blather for their equivalent of material design.

Maybe they're testing AI-generated content?

------
sergiotapia
The amount of doublespeak in this document is absolutely off the charts.

Disability equals Mismatched Human Interactions - really?

[http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/0/D/B0D4BF87-09CE-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/0/D/B0D4BF87-09CE-4417-8F28-D60703D672ED/INCLUSIVE_TOOLKIT_MANUAL_FINAL.pdf)

Why not just accept that some people have disabilities and it's everybody's
responsibility to help these people out to the best of our abilities? It's the
moral thing to do.

Why bend and squish words into different definitions?

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Why bend and squish words into different definitions?"

It's not bending definitions, the World Health Organisation's definition of
disability is a generic description of what a disability is.

To be clear, the definition given was...

“a mismatch in interaction between the features of a person’s body and the
features of the environment in which they live.”

In what way does that not line up with what a disability is?

~~~
blfr
This definition matches every discomfort.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Such as?

Perhaps it helps to think of disability this way to shake the idea that it has
to be a permanent state. If I break my leg, but it eventually heals, was I not
temporarily disabled?

~~~
blfr
Such as not enough leg room on a plane, a chair with not enough padding or
ventilation -- every possible discomfort, including most trivial ones, even to
a fully-abled, mint-condition, picture-of-health human is some mismatch
between them and their environment.

(If I wanted to be snide, I'd include "using Windows".)

~~~
ZenoArrow
Using your leg room example, if it's inhibiting your potential range of motion
whilst sitting then you are disabled.

To look at it a different way, isn't a person with healthy eyes as equally
disabled as a blind person when they're in a completely dark room? The source
of the disability is not as important as the outcome.

~~~
kevhito
No. Because you (and WHO) are consistently leaving out the obvious -- all of
this is in comparison to "typical" human abilities. According to that
definition, everyone living in a northern climate becomes disabled each
winter, since none of us can survive outside without special clothing. And if
humans could see magnetic lines, we'd all certainly be better matched to our
earth environment, so does that mean all humans disabled?

~~~
ncphillips
> According to that definition, everyone living in a northern climate becomes
> disabled each winter

This seems valid to me.

The prefix "dis-" is a negation prefix[1], and "abled" means to have a range
of abilities[2], so it is equivalent to not-abled. Not having a range of
abilities.

There's nothing in this most basic description that suggests being disabled is
an abnormal or permanent state.

In the context of getting to the grocery store in the winter, I am quite
literally disabled by the cold temperatures, unless I have some natural
occurrence or form of technology that en-ables me–el nino, clothing, vehicles,
underground tunnels.

I am disabled from reading this screen if I don't have my glasses on. This is
a permanent disability, but I can correct it by either putting on my glasses,
or by making the text bigger.

Our set of abilities is not immutable, and technology is just meant to add to
this set. Microsoft's document is just about making designers aware that not
everyone always has the same set of abilities as the designers themselves.
Recognizing this allows us to design technology that helps more people in more
situations.

WHO did not change _the_ definition of "disabled", they _corrected their own_
definition to recognize that whether or not a person is disabled is a
contextually dependent question.

[1]
[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis-](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis-)
[2]
[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled)

~~~
kevhito
I think my comment rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and for that I
apologize. Actually, I agree with almost everything the replies argue. My
point -- which I did didn't make well -- was that I think using the word
"disabled" in the WHO sense is either disingenuous or silly. Silly, because if
everyone is disabled at all times, then the word becomes meaningless.
Disingenuous in the sense that "not having a range of ability" implicitly
really means having an unusually or unexpectedly limited or different (but not
strictly larger) range of abilities as compared to some poorly-defined range
for a "typical" human, without actually admitting that we are comparing
against some standard.

Yes, the standard is vague and poorly defined. And I agree that disability
doesn't need to be permanent or easily visible or significant, that it is
context dependent, and it obviously isn't binary. I have no qualms with the
idea that everyone or nearly everyone is, at some point and in some ways,
disabled. And perhaps most importantly, we should disentangle the concept of
disability with moral/value judgments.

Still, I think all of the examples I've seen on this thread are implicitly
comparing against a standard but explicitly pretending they are not. You
mention that you are disabled from reading your screen. Because many humans
would have that ability. You didn't say you were disabled because you don't
have the x-ray vision needed to see through walls. Just like nobody would say
a person is disabled because their body doesn't produce enough fur or whale
blubber to survive a new england winter.

------
kukx
Inclusive Design Toolkit ([https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/design/practice#toolkit](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/design/practice#toolkit)) consists of a downloadable manual and activities.
The manual is an overview of the inclusive design problem. The activities are
more like a guideline to researching possible design solutions.

I didn't find there any ready to use design recipes.

------
blisse
Title is not clear but this is Microsoft saying they are committed to
designing for accessibility in mind. I believe they added a new section called
the Inclusive Design Toolkit.

Linking to the PDFs or something would be a lot more straightforward than
linking to their general design page.

The PDFs make some good points about how designing for accessibility has
secondary, wider reaching impact.

It's nice to see at the very least that Microsoft cares enough to make this.

------
chris_wot
When I eventually got to Microsoft's actual PDF that explains this I noticed
two things:

1\. The URL is
[http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/2/C/F2C19EC6-03E2-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/2/C/F2C19EC6-03E2-4D8C-B417-0265B808CD06/Microsoft-
Design-Language-1603.pdf)

Why the heck does everything at Microsoft have to involve URLs with GUIDs in
it?

2\. That PDF is one of the worst documents purportedly on design frameworks
I've ever seen. It's not functional, or direct, the text is in a tiny font,
there are pages that do nothing with no content.

Ironically in page 20 they specify a minimum size of 12 EP, yet the label on
the side is like half this size! Wut?

------
ungzd
Microsoft says they're changed but still designs everything for office
slavery. Even graphical style emphasises it. Looking at this page first
thoughts are: suits, ringing phones, cold calls. They're designing hamster
wheels. They sell their software to business executives, not users who will
use it.

------
kbhn
"Human beings have been at the center of design practices for a long time."

What does this sentence even mean? Who else would be at the center? Cats?

~~~
ncphillips
They may be referencing IDEO's Human-Centered Design [1].

I think the danger is that if you don't intentionally use human-centered
design processes, you could end up "just getting it done", or "reducing cost",
or nothing at all in the center.

Surely you've heard some horror story of engineers spending millions of
dollars designing software, but they neglect to include the end users in the
design process. What happens in this story? It finally makes it to the users
and they deem it unusable.

There was a fun little incident in Canada recently where this was probably
part of the issue [2].

[1] [http://www.designkit.org/human-centered-
design](http://www.designkit.org/human-centered-design)

[2] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/psac-
pro...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/psac-protest-
phoenix-pay-system-st-johns-1.3726011)

------
Kiro
So... what is this?

~~~
petepete
I'm not sure, I skimmed the entire thing and still don't know.

~~~
tscs37
I read the entire thing forwards and backwards and either way does not make
any more sense than the other.

I guess marketing.

------
dqv
Here I am again to complain about bad focus support. The biggest travesty is
people pushing the diversity narrative without... being inclusive.

The page has javascript, so I know they can put in javascript that targets the
keyboard and helps users know where the hell they are focused. The focus
outlines on those damn buttons is way too non-obvious.

------
0xFFC
Despite using Windows regularly and doing my development on it, I have serious
problem with Microsoft approach. They literally tried to ignore many people
who uses low dpi _right now_. I know people are going to adopt better monitor
in somewhere along the line. But whole world is not just silicone valley and
as far as I can see in third world countries (which is where Microsoft rules)
99% uses very low DPI monitors for desktop and laptop. That's because for a
long time manufacturers produced and sold low dpi monitor.

Changing your underlying technology ( as far as I know they adopted
DirectWrite as replacements for ClearText) with out caring about your users
experience (and ironically making it worse that what it was) does not mean
anything other than ignoring and don't caring about your user base.

Font rendering in Windows 10 is ridiculous. It is in worst possible shape. (In
UWP and modern app). At the other hand, Ubuntu, Fedora (with freetype tweak)
font rendering is fabulous.

I hated that guy, Steve Ballmer. He didn't know basic rule of management. You
as manager cannot force people to use something you want. You should provide
them better experience overall.

I know there are some technical issues there about ClearText (which was not
that good -far from freetype-, but much better than DirectWrite). We are
talking about biggest and most successful software company in history of
mankind. There is got to be better way than ignoring your userbase. I am sure
they _can_ provide better font rendering for UWP in low DPI monitors.

Let be honest nobody cared about windows modern apps before integrating them
into Windows core itself. Right now every time i open settings app my eyes
hurt.

P.S. I do realize most people in HN have high DPI monitor, but if you can just
try to use UWP app in 14 inch monitor with 1366x768 resolution (which is more
than common in third world countries), and compare it to ClearText.

P.S 2. this is not only for third world countries. As far as I know gamers
tend to buy large screen but with 1080p resolution. I tested on it, font
rendering on anything less than 200 DPI is fucking nightmare. And doesn't
matter how much smoother UWPs animation's are. Or how much their design are
cool. When text is ridiculously awful, it doesn't worth using.

www.sven.de/dpi

P.S 3 This is one of the saddest experience I had as SE. Microsoft knew they
had desktop users locked in, and because of that they didn't care. Imagine a
world which Microsoft had serious competitor in desktop/laptop OS space. I am
sure they wouldn't dare to mess with user experience in such way. I am really
happy with recent increase in Apple's iMac's and MacBook's.

~~~
grogenaut
lol I have all sorts of issues on the new high dpi computers at work. One of
them being the fonts too small (which they actually have a way to fix via zoom
now). One of them being random applications can't handle it. like any
transition I think it's a mess. I do like being able to zoom the hell out of
and shrink the hell out of text though depending on the time of day. As I get
older I definitely mess with the font sizes throughout the day a lot.

~~~
0xFFC
I do understand what you saying. But I think there is subtle but important
difference here. Microsoft deliberately ruined font rendering experience for
users who already was using their platform, and didn't care because they knew
they had them locked in.

But small fonts and etc problems in high DPI monitors raised in kind of
adoption old apps (Win32 API) in new technologies (high DPI monitors). This is
quite ordinary. Every manufacturer or company will experience something
similar eventually.

~~~
grogenaut
They ruined an entire OS series just to get their tablet version of the UI
out. I think this one is tame compared to that, vista, or ME.... Or BOB

~~~
0xFFC
Lol. Haven't thought that way about it.

------
izolate
Judging from the fact that Windows 10 still uses icons from 1995, I am
surprised to learn that Microsoft even has a design department.

------
gyvastis
When did Microsoft became eligible to speak about design?

~~~
chestnut-tree
Microsoft has a long history of providing accessibility options in their
products (long before Apple or Google started taking accessibility seriously).

Microsoft have never been very good with visual and interaction design in
their desktop operating system. However, Windows Phone is the exception. It's
visually attractive, and has nice, well thought-out interactions. I think it's
superior to Android and iOS in many ways. It's obvious that both Apple and
Google took some cues from Windows Phone in the updates to their own mobile
operating systems. (Undoubtedly, all these companies look at each others
products when designing new features).

~~~
icemelt8
Same windows phone that forgot to put a notification bar until Windows Phone
8.1 update?

------
r0n0j0y
Microsoft laying the foundation for Hololens apps?

------
thrownaway23
so now accessibility is called "inclusiveness" ? Can we please stop with the
marketing bullshit ?

------
grogenaut
inclusive design page captures the back event via a redirect page.

------
andrewvijay
That's quite a lot of reading to do in a landing page. Needs a tldr; section!

~~~
chris_wot
It's amazing there is so much text surrounded by negative space yet they have
managed to say nothing at all. That's quite an accomplishment really.

------
andriesm
Oh no, the social justice warriors have invaded Microsoft!!!

(Double speak, meaningless sentences abound - that if you were to strip them
from the article no meaning would be lost.)

