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Good practice Imported

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

United Arab Emirates · Abu Dhabi · See the United Arab Emirates profile · See the Abu Dhabi profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 39% 76/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

The UAE's 2024 National Digital Accessibility Policy moves federal services from ad-hoc fixes to inclusive-by-design: an 'Empathy Lab' embeds user testing with People of Determination and seniors into the national Design System (WCAG 2.2 AA).

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

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), United Arab Emirates
Period
2024–ongoing
Keywords
digital government, inclusive design, disability rights, UX / design systems

Context

In March 2024 the UAE Cabinet endorsed a National Digital Accessibility Policy, implemented by TDRA, requiring federal websites, apps and kiosks to meet WCAG-based 'AA' conformance.

Objectives

TDRA paired the policy with an 'Empathy Lab' methodology and updated Design System (DLS 2.0, WCAG 2.2) running recurring usability sessions with People of Determination, seniors and low-digital-literacy users, feeding findings into shared design-system components used across UAE PASS and UAE Verify.

Activities

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.

Conclusions

Public figures on the resulting error-rate or time-to-fix reduction were not available at the time of writing, so this should be read as an evidenced, ongoing institutional commitment rather than a fully quantified outcome.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — National policy implemented by TDRA across federal entities; specific budget not published.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — National Digital Accessibility Policy endorsed March 2024; case study published 2025.
Staffing & skills
TDRA Empathy Lab usability researchers, federal Design System (DLS 2.0) team

Conditions for success

  • WCAG 2.2 AA conformance requirement across federal digital services
  • recurring usability sessions with People of Determination, seniors and low-digital-literacy users feeding directly into shared design-system components

Common failure modes

  • public figures on error-rate or time-to-fix reduction not yet available

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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