Ethical UX: Designing for Inclusion, Sustainability, and Accessibility
In today’s digital landscape, designing for everyone is no longer optional—it’s a responsibility. Ethical UX places people and the planet at the heart of digital experiences by embedding accessibility, inclusion, and sustainability into the design process. By doing so, we don’t just improve usability—we build lasting trust and long-term engagement.
Ethical UX
Is a Competitive Advantage Ethical? UX design isn’t just a moral stance—it’s a strategic move. Research indicates that companies adopting ethical design principles tend to experience higher user satisfaction and stronger customer loyalty. The WebAIM Million report reveals that most websites still fail to meet basic accessibility standards, leaving millions of users excluded. When we prioritize sustainability, we also align with the Karlskrona Manifesto for Sustainability Design, which urges designers to take responsibility for the long-term environmental and social impacts of digital products.
The Karlskrona Manifesto for Sustainability Design
Accessibility is foundational, not a feature; designing with accessibility in mind improves user experience for everyone, not just those with disabilities. For example, ensuring high color contrast and legible font sizes can aid users with visual impairments, but it also benefits users in sunlight or on small screens. Ensuring your site supports keyboard navigation and screen readers enhances usability and compliance with the WCAG 2.2 Guidelines, which serve as the international standard for accessibility. Captions and transcripts not only assist deaf users but also support comprehension for non-native speakers and users in noisy environments.
The WCAG 2.2 guidelines and success criteria are organized around the following four principles, which lay the foundation necessary for anyone to access and use web content. Anyone who wants to use the web must have content that is:
Perceivable - Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. This means that users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can't be invisible to all of their senses)
Operable - User interface components and navigation must be operable. This means that users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform)
Understandable - Information and the operation of user interface must be understandable. This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding)
Robust - Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means that users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible)
Designing for Sustainability in UX
Sustainable UX means thinking beyond just the interface. Designers can reduce environmental impact by optimizing assets, such as images and code, to lower data usage, thereby reducing carbon emissions. Hosting sites on green servers or using darker interfaces (which use less energy on OLED screens) are small but meaningful steps. Drawing from Jonathan Chapman’s concept of emotionally durable design, creating digital products that users build relationships with over time can reduce the need for constant redesigns and excessive consumption.
Ethical UX enhances SEO and User Engagement: Accessible and inclusive sites are more likely to rank well in search engines. For instance, Google’s algorithms favor websites that are fast, readable, and user-friendly on all devices. Including alt text, semantic HTML, and structured metadata can improve both accessibility and SEO performance. Optimizing for sustainability also boosts performance—faster load times and reduced energy usage benefit both users and search engines.
What to Do?
Instead of treating accessibility and sustainability as checkboxes, integrate them into your design strategy and practice. Use tools like WAVE or Axe to assess and improve accessibility for users. Remove any dark patterns that manipulate users. And test your product with a range of users, including those with disabilities, to ensure you’re truly designing for all.
Ethical UX is not just about compliance—it’s about care. Care for the people who use our products, and care for the world we live in. When we design inclusively and sustainably, we build not only better products but a better future.
