Creating technology that works for everyone starts by listening to the people who use it. Co-design, a hands-on, collaborative process where external community members work directly with Meta designers and researchers to shape product development, helps build accessibility in from the start.
In this Q&A, Maxine Williams, Vice President of Accessibility and Engagement at Meta, and Victoria Boelman, Director of Insight & Policy at RNID, discuss why co-design matters, what it takes to create more inclusive products, and how working directly with users can lead to better outcomes for everyone.
This conversation builds on RNID’s ongoing collaboration with Meta, including a recent opportunity for RNID colleagues to observe a product co-design session and see inclusive innovation in action.
What does it mean to truly centre accessibility in how products are designed and built?
Victoria: Accessibility is something that almost all organisations talk about, but we often see that in many instances it’s still treated as a bit of an add-on.
Maxine: If you were truly centring accessibility, it would be a starting condition rather than a finishing check. You wouldn’t wait until the end to ask, ‘Can a deaf person use this?’. I think that’s how you truly centre it – you make it a condition when you are developing a product, so that you have the insights that you need to make the best product to serve the world.
What does meaningful co-design look like in practice?
Maxine: There’s a long life cycle in product design, from conception to delivery. All along the way, there are opportunities to get different perspectives, which is what helps you bring different products to the market.
One of the ways in which we do that is through co-design. In addition to standard user research, where you look for a user base that is diverse in order to receive different aspects of who people are and what they need, we also host dedicated co-design workshops.
In a dedicated co-design, we have deaf people and people with hearing loss who are paid for their expertise, the same as any other specialists that we bring in to get insight. They are there early, when we are still choosing what to build and prioritise. We experience the product or concept with them, depending on where we are in the process.
In these co-designs, we have a range of people, researchers, developers and others, interacting with the product or concept and providing feedback. It helps us develop products in a way that makes people’s experiences part of the development process from the start rather than an add-on.
Victoria: It sounds like it really is true co-design. You’ve got not just researchers or UX and participants, but engineers and product developers in the room together.
Maxine: Yes. What people have described coming out of these co-designs is, “I learned in one day what it would have taken me a year to do otherwise.” The value of lived experience is priceless.
I recently did a co-design with people who have traumatic brain injury and memory loss. There’s a limitless range of human experience, and you’re trying to get feedback about all of it. When you sit in that room and people are crying, telling you how a product in development changed their life… One person said it was the first time they were able to be alone for more than an hour because it supported their independence and helped keep them on track. People give you specific examples of what worked, what didn’t work and what they would have liked to see.
Understanding from the perspective of a person with lived experience is priceless.
Victoria: Absolutely. When you’re talking about that limitless diversity of human experience, we talk about people who are deaf and people who have hearing loss, but that is a huge spectrum of people with different needs and experiences.
How do you balance speed of innovation with inclusive design?
Maxine: You balance it with sequencing. If we design with accessibility in mind as a first principle, then it’s just a question of asking, “How does this work for everyone?” If you do that from the beginning, there isn’t the delay that comes from having to retrofit accessibility later. It’s simply part of the process.
Accessible design has often involved products that are big and visually intrusive. As technology improved, devices became smaller and more discreet, but there are still trade-offs and issues like stigma to consider.
Sometimes you get the feedback, but you can’t deliver on it immediately because of technological limitations. That’s why I keep coming back to the responsibility of being thoughtful from the beginning.
You can’t deliver everything everyone wants right away if there’s too broad a range of needs. But if you’re thoughtful from the beginning and consider everyone, you get a better product.
Victoria: As AI-enabled accessibility tools become more common, accuracy becomes increasingly important. How do you think about the balance between innovation, trust and reliability?
Maxine: I think the goal before you release something is to get it to a point where it is usable and genuinely adds value to people’s lives.
You can add value without being perfect.
As long as you’re delivering something that meets a reasonable bar and improves people’s lives, you can continue to iterate and improve.
These technologies are the worst they’ll ever be because we keep learning and the technology keeps advancing.
Issues like latency are a good example. Would you have given up having a computer in the ‘90s because it took a long time to load pages?
Victoria: We were all delighted, right?
Maxine: Exactly. I wouldn’t have given up the value I had then because of what I was getting. The real question is whether you’re committed to continuing to learn and continuing to centre the experiences of diverse people so you can serve them best.
What excites you most about how emerging technologies could advance accessibility, particularly for people who are deaf or have hearing loss?
Maxine: One of the things I’m most excited about is time. We’ve never figured out how to make more of it, so it’s incredibly precious.
I’m excited about how technology is collapsing the delay that people who are deaf or have hearing loss have often faced in receiving information.
Previously, you might have relied on an interpreter to participate in a meeting or waited for meeting notes afterwards to understand what happened. Your ability to participate was impacted by that delay.
Now we have Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses where, because of the technology, the AI and what we’ve designed, you can participate in that same meeting through live, immediate transcription.
Collapsing that delay gives people back so much time. That’s what making technology more accessible to users looks like in practice.
That’s just one example, but the impact can be enormous.
Victoria: You’re right about the time, but it’s also the real-time participation. If you have to wait for the meeting notes, you’ve missed your opportunity to contribute. Real time is transformational for people.
Maxine: I think a lot about people and work.
If this technology can help people at work, be productive, grow in confidence and feel better about themselves, that’s hugely significant.
The technology helps people participate without delay, but the impact is much bigger than that.
I’m excited about what it can do for the human spirit, for productivity and for outcomes, because now everyone else in that meeting benefits from that person’s contribution too. That leads to better outcomes for everyone.
Partner with RNID
We work with organisations to design and improve products and services that truly work for people who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. Get in touch to explore how we can work together.