Priyanca D’Souza

Priyanca is a Senior User Researcher in the public sector, specialising in Accessibility and Inclusion. She has recently worked on complex projects for GDS, Cabinet Office, Defra and Companies House.

She aims to use her lived experience of access needs to embed inclusive practices within teams to drive forward ethical and inclusive design which better meets people's needs. Enabling people to empathise with the barriers our users can face and finding opportunities to alleviate and change things to make experiences better.

She is fascinated by the impacts different barriers and conditions can have on cognition, behaviour, people’s interactions and experiences of the world. She has a background in Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, which she combines with lived and varied practical experience.

We often separate out different aspects of accessibility. However, it’s not uncommon for people to experience multiple barriers which compound each other. If we zoom in too much on solving a problem for one group of people, we can involuntarily make experiences less inclusive.

But, real people can’t descope parts of their lived experience. The complexity of real lived experiences still exists even if we don't research or design for it.

You’ll come away from the talk with a more nuanced and human approach to accessibility and design research which goes beyond compliance. This is hopefully more effective and more reflective and true of how things really are.

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