Inclusive UX: Designing Websites for Everyone

What it actually covers

Regine Gilbert's "Inclusive UX" is built as a short arc: define inclusive design and accessibility, walk through core principles, cover user research, then planning, testing, and a closing look at innovation. Each lesson runs a few minutes, and the whole class clocks in under 35, so it functions more like a briefing than a workshop. Gilbert opens by framing accessibility as something too often bolted on at the end of a project rather than built in from the start, and that framing carries through every subsequent lesson.

The principles section is the closest thing to a toolkit here. Gilbert points to WebAIM as a resource for checking color contrast and running site evaluations, and walks through the WAVE tool's ability to flag accessibility issues on a live page. She also spends time on Microsoft's inclusive design toolkit, which categorizes disability as permanent, temporary, or situational, a framework that reframes accessibility as something that touches nearly every user at some point rather than a narrow edge case.

Where the substance lives

The user research lesson is the strongest stretch of the course. The empathy map exercise, where a student's colorblind parent explains that color alone should never carry meaning in a chart, is a small but vivid example of why direct contact with real users catches problems that guidelines alone miss. Gilbert also draws a clear, useful line between participatory design, where disabled users help shape a product as it's being built, and usability testing, where they evaluate something closer to finished. That distinction is worth more than most of the tool references in the course, because it changes when and how you involve people rather than just what software you run afterward.

The planning lesson adds legal and business grounding, citing the 2006 lawsuit between the National Federation of the Blind and Target over inaccessible screen-reader support, and noting how the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508 apply to government-adjacent work. It is a reasonable nudge toward taking accessibility seriously as a compliance and business issue, not just a design nicety.

The gap

What the course does not do is teach implementation. Gilbert repeatedly notes that the class looks at design as a way of thinking rather than code, and that boundary is honest but limiting. Viewers hear about WCAG's three conformance tiers, ALT text on Twitter, and screen reader shortcuts like Command-F5 on a Mac, but never get a structured walkthrough of writing accessible markup, structuring headings, or testing with a screen reader beyond turning it on. Usability testing recommendations lean on general advice, like recruiting through local colleges or budgeting five-dollar gift cards for participants, rather than a repeatable testing script.

For a beginner-level primer, the pacing and tone work well, and Gilbert's own field examples, from LinkNYC's audio kiosks to the Xbox adaptive controller, keep the material grounded rather than theoretical. But anyone expecting to leave with a checklist or a testing protocol will be disappointed. It is a course about orientation and mindset, not a course about building accessible interfaces.

What you will learn

• ·How to distinguish permanent, temporary, and situational disabilities when scoping a user base
• ·How to use WebAIM and the WAVE tool to audit color contrast and accessibility issues
• ·How to build an empathy map for users with low vision, colorblindness, or blindness
• ·The difference between participatory design and standard usability testing
• ·How to recruit disabled testers through local colleges, community organizations, and paid volunteers
• ·How to apply WCAG's single-A, double-A, and triple-A tiers when planning a project