I have complicated feelings about empathy labs. On the one hand, empathy is a good thing. Labs where people can test things are a good thing. But there’s a massive disconnect between intention and delivery.
Empathy labs don’t build empathy - they build pity
I used to run content design training in an empathy lab. We used assistive technology, different devices, simulations and personas. People could:
- Try doing tasks as various personas with access needs.
- Work out how to improve accessibility.
- Test content with assistive technology.
I want to note here that I am disabled. I’m a magnification user. I customise my colour scheme so that my brain can process it. When I led training in an empathy lab, I led with that lived experience.
As a disabled person, I still got comments like “this [task] must be so hard for disabled people”. Currently, yes it is. But this is not a chance to pity us. This is your opportunity to take a fresh look at it and redesign it to be more accessible.
I was once doing some training with glasses that simulate different eye conditions. Keep in mind that I have a combination of at least two of those simulated eye conditions in real life. Someone asked me "so how would you see around this?" and I thought "right, that's it. It's not building empathy, it's building pity and a desire to 'fix' people. I’m done."
Nothing about us without us
Without direction and the lived experience of actual disabled people, empathy labs can turn accessibility into a game. You need the story behind the impairment. How disabled people can't turn it off and on. How it's not 'just one task' but the latest in a series of inaccessible things that day. To find out about disabled people's own workarounds.
An empathy lab session which is not led by a disabled person and their lived experience is just a fancy set of computers and simulations. And if there’s no story behind the tech, no experience behind the access needs, how useful can it be?
I have seen empathy labs turn into team play areas. A chance to ‘have a go’. To mess around and find out. They also become a dedicated space for people to test things using assistive technology themselves. In some ways, that’s a good thing. In reality, it often means that testing with disabled people stops being part of the work.
Remember that if you're not a native assistive technology user, of the specific kind of assistive tech that's being tested with, any manual testing you do with a piece of assistive tech is actually testing how good you are at using that assistive tech. It’s not testing whether the thing actually works with assistive tech.
One facilitator is unlikely to have every access need
It’s unlikely one person has all of the disabilities possible, all of the access needs covered by the empathy lab, or uses all of the assistive tech on a daily basis.
Unless there’s a team of disabled people who have empathy lab facilitation somewhere in their job description, and are paid for it, are your learning sessions going to be representative or useful?
And if the only way to run empathy lab sessions is if they’re led by disabled facilitators, that’s a huge ask of, and burden on, disabled people. It means they all have to be happy to:
- disclose their disability and access needs
- share and relive experiences of inaccessible scenarios
- educate others in how to make the world more accessible
Above all, empathy labs need a rebrand
What feels totally wrong to me about empathy labs is the word ‘empathy’. Because empathy building can be part of how they’re used, but only when they follow some strict conditions, including:
- learning about the social model of disability
- attending a lived experience talk by disabled people
- following some training guided by actual assistive technology users
- understanding that empathy is a continuous journey led by people, not things
In practice, I think meeting all of those conditions is very rare.
And even though the intention is to build empathy, that’s not always, or often, the result. Not everyone feels or experiences things the same way. For some, an experience could build empathy. For others, the same experience might create pity.
Just because someone enters an empathy lab and sees a few demonstrations does not mean they can empathise with the life of a disabled person.
It means they gain a (very) small insight into what life might be like for a disabled person.
So, perhaps a better name would be an ‘Insight Lab’.
Alternatives to try
Labs are not the only ways to see assistive technology in action. There are other ways you can get an insight into how people use it:
- Observe user research with real users of assistive technology. Better still, take notes.
- Watch videos of how disabled people use their assistive technology. There are lots of these on YouTube.
- Help people. For example, you could sign up to volunteer with Be My Eyes or a similar app. You’ll encounter the real lived experience of disabled people and get a deeper insight into their world.
Get help with testing
Content Design Ireland can help you test your website or content from a low vision and magnification perspective. Email us at contact@contentdesignireland.ie for more details.