Designing Inclusive Digital Experiences:  How education and industry benefit from diversity and how we can get there

As our world expands ever deeper into the digital sphere, with aspects of our educational, work and social lives increasingly spilling into the online realm, the need to create inclusive and thoughtfully designed digital tools and spaces is becoming more important. 

For Howard Rose, CEO of Firsthand Technology and an expert in virtual reality (VR), these digital tools and the experiences they can help create can lead to new and more meaningful ways of working or learning. For three decades, Rose has developed VR tools that have been used in a variety of settings—from learning Japanese to helping burn patients get through painful treatment. 

“I look at technology and VR as this amazing constructive, multisensory experience. You can create really powerful experiences for people that work at an emotional level, they work at an educational level, you can build assessments, you can do all sorts of things with it and it’s much more akin to doing, rather than watching or reading about something,” he says. 

In the learning context, Rose says, VR can help learners not only consume the content they are exposed to, but take an active role in creating an experience around it. “They become media producers in a way,” he says. 

But for a digital tool to become beneficial for a cross-section of students, he notes, it can’t simply be thought of as something that’s nice to have, or an added benefit.

“As long as it's an adjunct in public education, it’s going to be for enrichment, it's going to be for the high achievers,” he notes. 

Getting there takes leadership and investment—and not just investment in the capital costs, which Rose notes are far less than the investment in teacher training and curriculum development that will be required. 

Of course, having an internet connection—a reliable one—and access to the devices that can get us online are fundamental to ensuring these experiences and spaces are accessible, and not simply exclusive to those who have the benefit of access to these connections and tools. 

“The pandemic forced us to transform the way we work and learn in ways we couldn’t have imagined, certainly not at that speed. It’s really important to learn from this moment. We learned that digital platforms can improve access, removing geographical barriers. But, this isn’t the case for all,” says Lori Spadorcia, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs, Partnerships and Chief Strategy Officer at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada's largest mental health teaching hospital.

“We must constantly ask who isn’t at the ‘virtual table’ and why.”

And because these digital spaces are an extension of our physical worlds and our physical presence, it’s important to consider human needs when we’re creating them, she adds. 

“Building an inclusive digital space also demands the understanding that just as is the case for being in person, everyone has different ways of learning and working productively,” Spadorcia says. “Building connections, allowing people to bring their whole selves, allowing time for personal networking and diversifying the types of activity and discussion are critical.”

In the practical sense, it might mean ensuring participants have multiple ways of contributing to an online meeting—using the chat box, activating closed captioning, normalizing turning off video or using digital backdrops to reduce the pressure of putting home environments on display are all some ways educators and employers can help make a space more inclusive, she notes.

And to create the shift that welcomes and includes a diversity of people, with varied backgrounds and experiences, our approach to creating these spaces needs to shift away from what might work for a teacher or an employer, and instead to what students or employees need themselves, says Rose. He likens it to the Montessori method of education, which takes a child-centred approach to learning. 

“Think about who these people are, what they need, what they’re ready for and how to create a digital environment that is going to have that same sort of Montessorian effect—that people will just do it because it’s gratifying, it’s interesting, it’s engaging,” says Rose. 

When you don’t create an inclusive environment, diversity lags. And when you’re missing diversity, you’re missing a variety of perspectives, notes Rose. At the industry level, companies will struggle to understand their markets or create products that work and are adopted. Governments won’t be able to enact public policies that are relevant for the population. 

“We need the marginalized voices. We need to bring those people in and connect them and society will be better for it,” Rose says. “So I think the cost we pay is the lost opportunity and also stagnation at its worst point, when you lose the diversity, systems stagnate and a monoculture is very susceptible to disease.”