Hi there, This is the fifty first of D&T Special, a more in-depth view of topics that interest the Canvs team. Today's topic - Inclusivity is a question of match-making.
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✍️ From the Canvs Research & Editorial Desk
Accessibility has a visibility problem. Most product teams encounter it as a phase — something that follows design, gets reviewed against a standard, and is marked complete. That framing isn't careless so much as it is inherited; it reflects how the industry has traditionally sequenced the work. The result is that inclusion tends to be measured against the product that already exists, rather than shaping the product from the start.
This week the Canvs R&E team has spent some time pondering this concept, let’s dive into some details.
Inclusivity is a question of match-making
Kat Holmes' book Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design offers a more precise way to think about this. Her argument is that exclusion isn't usually the result of indifference, it's the result of focus. Systems get built around a narrow set of assumed abilities, and that narrowness hardens over time into defaults that everyone else is expected to work around. The piece draws from her framework to examine what those assumptions look like in practice, and why products keep producing the same exclusions even when teams are actively trying not to.
### Key takeaways from this read:
#### 1. Exclusion is a design output
The most important reframe in Holmes' argument is that exclusion isn't accidental — it's a consequence of deliberate focus. When a system is optimised for a specific set of abilities, people outside that range aren't forgotten; they simply were never fully accounted for. Naming this shifts the conversation from "how did this slip through" to "what did we build around, and for whom."
#### 2. Users adapting to a broken system looks like the system working
One of the observations in the piece is how invisible exclusion can be from the inside. When users memorise workarounds, ask for help, or quietly avoid certain flows, usage numbers continue and no alarm goes off. The system appears functional. But functioning and fitting are not the same thing, and the extra effort being carried by the user is real even when it's not being measured.
#### 3. Inclusion can't be retrofitted without loss
The assumption that accessibility can be addressed later — after launch, after scale, after the core product is stable — is one the piece challenges directly. Early decisions about what problems to solve and which users to prioritise shape the architecture of everything that follows. When inclusion is deferred, the product grows around its exclusions, and later fixes reduce harm without undoing it. The cost of getting it right early is almost always lower than the cost of correcting it later.
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