UX researchers are often the strongest advocates for inclusive design within enterprise organizations. You care deeply about building digital products that work for everyone, and you know that means engaging with users who reflect real human complexity.
However, amidst the rapid pace and complex demands of product development, it can be incredibly challenging to ensure that our research workflows themselves are fully accessible.
Even with the best intentions, it is easy for standard research operations to inadvertently introduce barriers for people with disabilities.
If your team is looking for ways to scale inclusive design, auditing how you conduct research is a fantastic place to start. Building digital products is difficult, and we know teams are doing their best to keep up. So rather than treating an audit as a punitive checklist, let’s look at how we can collaboratively adjust our end-to-end UX research workflows to ensure full, authentic participation.
The Foundation: WCAG A/AA Compliance
Before we look at the human and behavioral elements of your research workflow, it helps to start with the technical foundation. Checking your tools for WCAG A/AA compliance is a great first step.
At Mantis & Co., we like to advocate for going beyond WCAG, and also know the importance of making sure those WCAG checks have been done to address critical barriers for people.
If your recruiting platform, survey tool, consent forms, or unmoderated testing software cannot be navigated via keyboard or read by a screen reader, it can create immediate friction for participants. Ensuring your third-party research tools meet these foundational technical standards makes everything that follows much smoother.
But compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. Once your tools have a solid technical foundation, we can begin designing for the human experience.
Enter Personatypes: Designing for Human Complexity
To review the experiential side of your research workflow, we love using Personatypes.
Personatypes is a framework developed by Mantis & Co. that moves beyond flat, stereotypical disability personas. Instead of focusing purely on medical diagnoses, Personatypes reflect the emotional and psychological realities of how people actually live, adapt, and experience digital systems.
By looking at your research workflow through the lens of these archetypes, you can spot subtle barriers and design with more care.
1. Recruiting & Screeners
Enterprise recruiting screeners sometimes rely on clinical medical labels to filter participants, which can accidentally exclude people.
The Lens: The Gentle Observer and The Misread Signal.
The Gentle Observer is highly attuned to access barriers but often doesn’t identify as disabled, while The Misread Signal has an apparent disability but doesn’t align with common stereotypes.
The Audit Question: Might our screeners be inadvertently filtering people out? Instead of asking, “Do you have a cognitive disability?”, we might try behavioral questions like, “Do you frequently use tools to help you focus or block out distractions while working?“
2. Scheduling & Communication
Research operations naturally seek standardization, but asking participants to conform to strict corporate schedules can be tricky for those managing chronic conditions.
The Lens: The Energy Manager.
This user manages fluctuating physical, emotional, or cognitive bandwidth and seeks systems that respect their capacity.
The Audit Question: Are our standard 60-minute Zoom interviews asking too much? How might we design asynchronous, modular, or broken-up research engagements that allow participants to engage when their energy levels are optimal?
3. Consent & Onboarding
The way we introduce a participant to a study sets the tone for psychological safety. Walls of legal jargon can create cognitive fatigue.
The Lens: The Steady Processor.
This user prefers clear, consistent, and supportive experiences, and builds confidence through structure and positive feedback.
The Audit Question: Can we break onboarding down into a clear, step-by-step process that allows participants to move at their own pace without feeling rushed?
4. Unmoderated Testing
Unmoderated testing asks users to navigate tasks without a researcher present to help. For some, this lack of support can feel stressful.
The Lens: The Sensitive Navigator.
This user is sensitive to emotional or psychological risk and may disengage quickly if systems feel ambiguous or overwhelming.
The Audit Question: Does our unmoderated testing setup provide extreme clarity, transparency, and clear exit points? Do participants feel empowered to stop the test without feeling like they have “failed”?
5. Live Moderated Interviews
During live interviews, it is common to wait for participants to explicitly ask for what they need, which places the burden of accommodation on the user.
The Lens: The Internal Adapter.
This user may be new to a disability or processing it privately. They are highly unlikely to request support or accommodations, often blaming themselves for access challenges.
The Audit Question: How can we proactively offer support? Instead of waiting for a request, we might try: “We have closed captioning available, and we have a scheduled 5-minute break at the half-hour mark. Does that work for you?“
6. Testing the Prototypes
When testing low- or mid-fidelity prototypes, they often lack the underlying code required for assistive technology to work properly.
The Lens: The Lifelong Expert.
This user is deeply experienced with assistive technology (like screen readers) and can become frustrated by systems that ignore expected conventions.
The Audit Question: Are we bringing participants in to test prototypes that fundamentally cannot be navigated with their assistive tech? If a prototype isn’t ready for a screen reader, how can we adapt our research method (e.g., conceptual interviews) to ensure a supportive experience?
7. The Internal Ecosystem: Supporting Your Own Team
Finally, an inclusive research audit also looks inward. At Mantis & Co., we believe that authentic representation is a powerful driver of innovation. Ideally, people with disabilities are not just participating in your research; they are designing and facilitating it alongside you.
The Audit Question: Are our research archives, data repositories, slide decks, and internal documents accessible?
Digital documents are a core part of everyday communication, and when they aren’t accessible, they exclude people from integral learning and information. Designing accessible documents and internal systems from the start ensures that everyone—including researchers who use assistive technologies—can access the data needed to drive the product forward.
The Next Step: Validating with Real Users
Using the Personatypes framework to review your research operations is a wonderful way to build empathy and identify friction points early. It helps design and research leaders build more inclusive environments for their teams and their users.
However, Personatypes are a heuristic tool meant to guide your thinking, not replace the voices of real people.
At Mantis & Co., we believe that inclusive design is shaped by real use, not abstract “users”. While Personatypes can help you audit and prepare your workflows, the most important step is validating those assumptions by bringing real people with lived experiences into your research. Having disabled individuals participating in your research—and working on your team—is the true secret to transforming accessibility from a requirement into a driver of innovation.
We’re here for you
If your organization needs a supportive, strategic partner to help audit your research operations and build accessibility into your strategy, culture, and delivery, Mantis & Co. would love to help. Let’s connect.
