Web Accessibility VS Inclusive Design
Internet is infinite and so are the challenges that people may face when they try to be part of it. Sometimes it's a physical, tangible problem. Others, it may be mental, emotional, or simply contextual.
Web Accessibility helps to demolish some of these barriers, increasing the diversity of users navigating a website. This can lead to the mistake of using the terms inclusivity and accessibility (sometimes even usability) interchangeably.
While it's true that an accessible web is more inclusive, the goals of an Inclusive Design (also known as Universal Design) specialist go beyond people with disabilities. They will have in mind people with different abilities, but also language, economic backgrounds, education, geographic location, age, race, gender, etc.
Some of the responsabilities will overlap, and both are needed in order to create human-centered products. But assigning to Accessibility the one and only purpose of addressing the problems of the disabled community, helps researchers and every professional involved to stay focused on covering their needs in the best way possible.
Another key difference between the two, is that Accessibility has been standarized. We have official guidelines (WCAG's) that we can follow and knowing if our website is accessible or not is as easy as using a check-list. As we will see in future entries, this is not the ideal approach, but it's definitely a good starting point.
Finding out if your website is inclusive, however, can be trickier. Not only because of the broader life experiences and users it tries to cover, but it can also be subjective and hard to measure.