The UAE's Empathy Lab — Embedding Co-Design with People of Determination into the National Digital Design System

In March 2024 the UAE Cabinet endorsed a National Digital Accessibility Policy, implemented by the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), requiring federal government entities' websites, mobile apps and kiosks to meet WCAG-based 'AA' conformance. Rather than treating accessibility as a compliance checklist applied after launch, TDRA paired the policy with an 'Empathy Lab' methodology and an updated national Design System (DLS 2.0, aligned to WCAG 2.2) that runs recurring usability sessions with People of Determination, senior citizens and users with low digital literacy, feeding findings directly into backlog grooming and shared design-system components used across federal services such as UAE PASS and UAE Verify.
According to a 2025 case study published by UN DESA's Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government, the approach tracks assistive-technology test results and drop-off/error rates by user segment and monitors mean-time-to-accessibility-fix, aiming to cut remediation cycles by fixing shared components once rather than service-by-service. Public figures on the resulting error-rate or time-to-fix reduction were not available at the time of writing, so this practice should be read as an evidenced, ongoing institutional commitment rather than a fully quantified outcome.

Read the full analysis: https://tdra.gov.ae/en/media/press-release/2024/tdra-supports-the-implementation-of-national-digital-accessibility-policy