Accessibility in UX design isn't just about compliance – it's about connection. It's about creating products and services that everyone can use, regardless of ability, background, or circumstance. In 2025, inclusive UX is becoming a key differentiator for organizations that want to broaden their reach and make meaningful impact.

More than 1 billion people globally live with some form of disability, and many more face cognitive, cultural, or situational challenges that affect how they use digital products. If UX design doesn't account for this diversity, real people are unintentionally left out.

Inclusive UX goes beyond visual design

When most people think about accessibility, they might think of screen readers or color contrast settings. While those are important, accessible UX is much broader. It includes:

 
• Designing for people with temporary or situational limitations
 
• Supporting users with low literacy or non-native language fluency
 
• Ensuring inclusive navigation and content structure for cognitive diversity

Inclusive design means the user isn't expected to adapt to your product – your product adapts to the user. That mindset shift is crucial in today’s increasingly personalized and competitive digital landscape.

Why accessible UX is good business

Aside from being the right thing to do, inclusive UX also improves business performance. Studies show that accessible design often leads to:

 
• Expanded market reach and customer loyalty
 
• Better product usability for all users – not just those with specific needs
 
• Reduced churn and higher user satisfaction

Inclusive UX is not about designing only for edge cases – it’s about understanding the full range of users and recognizing that many face barriers you might not anticipate.

The growing role of research in designing for inclusion

To design products that are genuinely usable for all, teams need to engage in inclusive UX research methods. This means intentionally seeking out different perspectives, listening to underrepresented voices, and exploring real-world use cases. That’s where strategic, human-centered approaches like Jobs To Be Done come into play, offering insight into the goals people bring to your product.

Up next, we’ll explore how the JTBD framework fits into this mission of inclusive UX and how it can guide more thoughtful, accessible design decisions in 2025 and beyond.

The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is a modern way to understand users based on what they’re trying to achieve – their “job.” Instead of focusing solely on demographics or user personas, JTBD centers on the outcomes people want in a given moment, and the context surrounding their decision-making. It's a powerful approach for user-centered UX research because it starts with the problem the user wants to solve, not their profile.

What is JTBD, simply put?

Imagine someone downloads a food delivery app. Their real goal might not just be to order pizza – the job might be "feed my family quickly after a long day without having to cook." The JTBD framework asks: what progress is the user trying to make? What are their motivations, constraints, and surroundings at that time?

This framework highlights how context affects decisions, especially for people whose needs may not fit the “average” user. That’s why JTBD for accessibility in UX is gaining traction – it helps us see users as individuals with real-life challenges, not just data points.

How JTBD supports inclusive UX strategy

One of the key benefits of JTBD is its ability to uncover “unseen” user needs – those that may be overlooked in traditional research methods. This is especially useful when designing inclusive UX:

• Highlights functional barriers – like when a visually impaired user struggles with voice navigation in noisy environments
• Reveals emotional jobs – such as a user with anxiety needing reassurance and simplicity throughout the experience
• Centers diverse contexts – showing how cultural norms or household dynamics impact how someone completes a task

With this lens, designers can shift from thinking "How do typical users behave?" to "What situations and needs influence user choices?" That shift leads to better outcomes – for everyone.

Practical examples of JTBD and inclusive design

Let’s say your team is designing a banking app. A traditional approach might group users by income or age. A JTBD approach would explore jobs like “track my expenses automatically because I have ADHD” or “easily access my account in my second language while abroad.” These insights can guide alternative UX flows, accessible copywriting, or language toggle features that support real-world inclusion.

Why JTBD is a valuable tool for UX teams

The Jobs To Be Done framework for UX teams unlocks a human-first approach that pairs well with inclusive and accessible design. It helps product teams make thoughtful decisions rooted in empathy, not assumption. When combined with qualitative research and observational methods from human-centered organizations like SIVO Insights, JTBD becomes an engine for truly inclusive innovation.

In our next sections, we’ll dive deeper into how to apply JTBD insights in your design process and how UX teams can integrate these methods into ongoing accessibility efforts.

One of the biggest strengths of the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework is its focus on understanding real people in real-world contexts. Instead of designing products for generalized demographics like "millennials" or "seniors," JTBD digs into specific situations, uncovering what people are trying to do and why. This shift makes a major difference when designing with inclusivity in mind.

Moving Beyond Personas: Focusing on Human Motivations

Traditional UX design frameworks often rely on predefined personas that represent user segments. While helpful, personas can unintentionally overlook nuanced needs – especially for people from underrepresented groups or those with differing abilities. JTBD offers an alternative by focusing on the situations and emotional drivers behind users’ actions.

For example, someone struggling to refill a prescription online isn’t just a "disabled user" or a "senior customer." They may be someone who needs to manage their health discreetly while balancing pain or mobility challenges. JTBD helps teams uncover these deeper motivations so they can design with empathy and clarity.

Revealing the Many “Jobs” of Your Product

JTBD also encourages teams to look beyond the core function of a product and explore how various users might engage with it differently:

• A user with low vision may rely on text-to-speech tools to complete the same task a sighted user would do with a mouse.
• A multilingual household may need a mobile app whose language settings are easy to change between family members.
• A gig worker using your app on a moving bus has different ergonomic needs than someone at home on a desktop.

By exploring these diverse usage situations, your UX research becomes more inclusive – addressing edge cases that often represent real people.

Inclusive UX Starts with Inclusive Exploration

At its core, inclusive UX design begins with curiosity. JTBD encourages teams to ask broader, more open-ended questions like:

• What circumstances make this job harder or easier for someone?
• What emotions come up when someone tries to complete this task?
• What are users trying to avoid or achieve when they use our product?

These questions surface pain points that might otherwise go unnoticed, especially for users at the margins. The JTBD framework helps UX teams zoom in on context, leading to more human-centered, adaptable, and ultimately more inclusive design outcomes.

Many accessibility challenges stem not from a lack of intention, but from a lack of visibility. If teams don’t know about the barriers certain users face, it’s nearly impossible to design solutions that include them. This is where the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework becomes a powerful lens for UX research and strategy.

Seeing Beyond the Interface

JTBD helps break down the user journey into real-world context: when, where, and why people are trying to complete a task. These "micro-moments" uncover friction points that standard usability testing might miss. For example:

• An online banking user with dyslexia may struggle more with error messages than form fields – something that becomes clearer when examining their emotional and functional “jobs.”
• A teenage caregiver using a health app for an elderly parent might find navigation overwhelming, not because they’re inexperienced, but because they’re multitasking under emotional pressure.

These experiences illustrate how JTBD sheds light on the broader situational and emotional factors tied to accessibility – far beyond just visual or physical impairments.

Spotting Common Access Barriers Across Different “Jobs”

JTBD research exposes patterns that can point to systemic accessibility gaps. As you collect data from diverse users, you may start to notice recurring “struggling moments” – signs that the current design is unintentionally excluding people. Examples include:

• Dependency on mouse-based navigation for completing essential tasks
• Low color contrast causing information loss during task switching
• Form flows that ignore screen reader logic, causing user confusion

These are not isolated bugs – they’re missed opportunities to empower engagement. By analyzing the emotional and practical triggers behind each job, JTBD allows teams to rethink UX strategy from the ground up with accessibility in focus.

Making Accessibility Improvements Feel Like Product Wins

One of JTBD’s most powerful benefits is that it connects accessibility improvements to measurable product value. When you understand the job users are hiring your product to do – and the moments that keep them from achieving it – fixes feel less like compliance tasks and more like growth drivers.

For instance, if an app update with improved voice command features increases successful task completions among mobility-impaired users, that’s not just an accessibility win – it’s a customer retention win. JTBD reframes accessibility gaps as innovation opportunities, not afterthoughts. By integrating these insights early and often, UX teams can identify and close gaps in a proactive, empowering way.

Once you’ve gathered human-centered insights through the Jobs To Be Done framework, the next step is turning those into action. Applying JTBD in your UX strategy translates qualitative stories into practical design moves that serve more people – especially those who are often overlooked.

Mapping Jobs Into Design Use Cases

Each “job” represents a problem to solve. When a user says, “I just want to get through this checkout before my baby wakes up,” there’s more than speed at play – there’s emotion, urgency, and vulnerability. JTBD helps teams transform statements like these into actionable design criteria:

• Simplified flows that reduce cognitive load
• Flexible options (like saving progress or voice input)
• Clear, calm language that respects stressful user contexts

This job-based approach encourages universal design without needing to create separate experiences for each user group. Instead, it surfaces shared needs that apply across different types of users, improving accessibility without adding complexity.

Collaborating Around Inclusive Goals

JTBD shines when it informs cross-functional decision-making. Product teams, developers, marketers, and researchers can align around the “core jobs” users are hiring the product to do. When inclusive design becomes shared language, your team gets better at spotting exclusion risks early – long before launch.

For example, a team designing a scheduling tool might discover that non-native speakers and people with dyslexia share a common JTBD: "I need to confirm an appointment without stress." This leads to UI updates like:

• Using icons with clear labels
• Offering multiple ways to confirm (voice, one-click, SMS)
• Avoiding unnecessary time zone jargon or colors alone for status

These small changes create more accessible UX for a wide audience, and stem directly from understanding the job, not the demographic.

Keeping Inclusion Embedded in Design Thinking

Using JTBD for accessibility in UX isn’t a one-time add-on. It's an iterative mindset that aligns naturally with design thinking principles. You continuously test and refine your features based on evolving user insights – especially from underrepresented voices. Design teams that practice inclusive UX research methods with JTBD stay tuned into real-world usage – even as context shifts over time.

In short, applying JTBD means asking: How can we help people do what they need to do, in the way that makes the most sense for them? That’s the heart of inclusive design – and it’s also smart, sustainable UX strategy.