Designing with, not for: How lived experience is shaping more inclusive digital learning

As AI and digital platforms take over modern education, most accessibility tools are still built to satisfy technical compliance checklists rather than actual human needs. A learning portal might pass an automated audit, yet remain confusing and exhausting for a student navigating a lecture with low vision or an attention condition.

The Inclusive Co-design Sprint, an intiative led by Inclusive Impact Asia and Inclusive Solutions, in close collaboration with RMIT Wellbeing under its commitment to the IDEA framework  and supported by global initiatives such as the AT2030 Frontiers Programme, was designed to break that pattern. Instead of treating people with disabilities as passive testers or final beneficiaries, the initiative brought together engineering and design students, educators, accessibility specialists, and learners with lived experience as equal design partners.

Over nine weeks, the project brought together young people with and without disabilities, alongside experienced mentors and trainers, to uncover overlooked barriers and co-create digital learning tools that truly include everyone.

Throughout this journey, 19 participants across communications, education, technology, and design teamed up with 20 mentors and trainers to answer this question: What makes digital learning difficult to access, and who is left behind when systems are not built for everyone? 

By inviting lived experience to frame the problem from day one, the sprint shifted teams away from comfortable design assumptions. Participants moved beyond standard compliance guidelines, pinpointing the subtle navigation hurdles that automated tools consistently overlook. 

The sprint kicked off with a structured training program built around four interconnected arears: perspectives on disability and accessibility, equity design thinking and co-design, inclusive collaboration and communication, and technical and contextual knowledge. Educators and accessibility specialists worked closely with participants, bridging the gap between technical compliance checklists and the day-to-day realities of how students actually navigate and experience learning environments.

Nicholas Livingston, Manager of Equitable Learning and Accessibility at RMIT Wellbeing, emphasized that true co-design requires bringing everyone who matters to the table and actively partnering with learners to develop shared solutions. "It cannot just be a consultative process; there must be buy-in from the beginning to actually implement those co-designed solutions, so the story does not simply end when the design phase is done.," he asserted.

Divided into four dedicated teams, participants tackled video learning barriers for people who are deaf, visually impaired, neurodivergent, or managing different learning styles. Having team members who personally navigate these conditions grounded the entire project in authentic lived experience. Together, they formulated practical hypotheses, surveyed real user pain points, and designed inclusive prototypes built for everyday use.

For Design Studies student Nguyen Thien Phuc, whose team focused on video learning for people with visual impairments, this hands-on collaboration reshaped his approach to design:

"I was able to gain a practical perspective by working with people who have experience. As someone who has not faced these challenges myself, I realized how difficult it is to make accurate assumptions without first listening and learning."

Armed with these insights, the teams spent the subsequent weeks developing and testing iterative prototypes, continuously refining their concepts based on real-world feedback. At the end of the sprint, the teams had the chance to share their solutions and broaden their perspectives around accessibility, co-design, and inclusive education on Demo Day. The presented solutions included a dedicated literature comprehension platform featuring Vietnamese sign language materials and dictionaries for deaf learners, a comprehensive set of online learning platform guidelines accommodating diverse learning needs, and an optimized AI search assistant integrated into digital classrooms to help students with ADHD process information more easily.

This journey culminated on Demo Day, hosted in a hybrid format in person and via Zoom.

Focusing specifically on visual accessibility, Phuc’s team explored the subtle obstacles that blind and low vision students encounter on online learning platforms. By working side by side with teammates who navigate visual impairments daily, the group uncovered fundamental differences in how educational content is actually navigated and understood, moving far beyond technical checklist. While sighted users instantly take in an overall layout before zooming in on specific details: blind users rely on screen readers that process information strictly in a linear order, moving from left to right and top to bottom. Without proper structural context, this rigid, fragmented flow can be confusing and make it difficult for blind learners to build a clear mental picture of the interface.

This firsthand perspective revealed a critical insight: even platforms that check every standard accessibility box can remain difficult to navigate in practice. These nuanced barriers would have remained hidden under typical design assumptions, proving that meaningful improvements only emerge when listening to people who live the experience every day. 

The team proposed practical improvements rooted in real user experiences rather than assumptions.

Reflecting on the final presentations, Project Lead Ms. Ngo Thuy Anh Tuyet remarked: The way our teams collaborated, listened, and addressed unspoken barriers demonstrated incredible dedication. By centering on authentic lived experiences, they developed practical and inclusive solutions that serve diverse users across all abilities.”

Meanwhile, Simon O’Donoghue, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility Advisor at RMIT Vietnam, was particularly impressed by the students' nine-week journey, watching them evolve from early, tentative ideas into thoughtful, fully realized prototypes. While these prototypes will require further refinement before broad implementation, the true value of the sprint lies in the mindset it established: teams learned to listen first, question their initial assumptions, and actively design with communities rather than simply for them.

Connecting this effort back to the university's broader mission, Nick emphasized that sustainable change depends on ongoing commitment: "It comes down to RMIT's core values of inclusion and integrity: following through on those promises to ensure a genuinely inclusive and accessible learning environment for all." 

As digital and blended education continues to evolve, accessibility can no longer be treated as a technical checklist or an afterthought. Throughout the sprint, lived experience was never brought in at the very end just to validate an existing concept. Instead, it guided the work from day one, actively defining the real problems and shaping every stage of the solution. By demonstrating how genuine personal perspectives enrich both technical and instructional design, the project offers a clear blueprint for the future of higher education: one where diverse forms of expertise unite to ensure every learner not only has access to the digital classroom, but genuinely belongs in it.

Story: Pham Thanh Thao, a Professional Communication student. This article does not reflect the views of RMIT Vietnam as an institution.