Summary

Dr. Tanvir Bush joins the Web Usability Podcast to explore what genuine inclusion looks like beyond compliance and checkbox exercises. Drawing on her experience as a writer, disabled activist, and researcher, Tanvir shares why inclusion starts with understanding what makes people feel safe, welcome, and able to belong. The conversation covers meaningful co-creation, access intimacy, Crip Time, creative approaches to participation, and the importance of involving disabled people from the very beginning. Tanvir and host Lucy Collins also reflect on how rushing research and design especially in the age of AI can leave out the human insight needed to make better products and services.

Takeaways

• Inclusion is a continuing practice, not a course or checklist to complete.
• Start with self-reflection: consider where you feel safe and welcomed, and what creates that feeling.
• Move from “What can we do for you?” to “What can we do for each other?”
• Genuine co-creation means involving people early, giving them influence, allowing enough time, and paying them for their contributions.
• Creative methods can help people share experiences when conventional interviews or surveys are not a good fit.
• Making time for human participation can strengthen research and design; speed alone is not a substitute for understanding people.

Sound bites

• “What can we do for each other?”
• “Every single human life has immense value and brings something.”
• “You cannot live in emergency.”
• “People need time to be included and they need time to process.”
• “You still need to sit down with a person and speak to them.”
• “What makes me feel safe? What makes me feel welcomed?”

Find out more about Dr. Tanvir Bush here.