Inclusione digitale e cultura aziendale: strategie di progettazione accessibile

In the contemporary context, digitalization emerges as a strategic lever for the transformation of production and communication processes, reshaping the forms of interaction between individuals, institutions, and businesses. In this scenario, digital inclusion plays an essential role in ensuring fair access to the services, information, and opportunities offered by digital environments. However, despite the advanced regulatory framework and technological progress, the design of inclusive services still exhibits vulnerabilities: content accessibility, although recognized as a fundamental value and legal obligation, often remains fragmented, relying more on the sensitivity of individual professionals than on consolidated strategies. Overcoming this vision requires a systemic and integrated approach, where skills, roles, and responsibilities are orchestrated within a framework oriented not only toward technical quality, but also toward social inclusion. From this perspective, accessibility must be conceived as a structural principle of the project, to be integrated transversally and simultaneously across all design and development phases rather than as a criterion to be verified a posteriori, as occurs in current practice. Indeed, it constitutes an essential element for extending the benefits of the digital realm and ensuring a fair, inclusive experience consistent with the diverse abilities, preferences, and conditions of use of internet users. Conducted in collaboration between the Department of Architecture and Design and the software house ManyDesigns S.r.l., the research critically investigates the challenges and opportunities arising from the integration of inclusion and accessibility principles into the design and development processes of digital solutions, highlighting the influence of design choices and the composition of multidisciplinary design and development teams on the quality of the solutions and the well-being of the professionals involved. The investigation is situated within a production context typical of software development realities, where design engages in daily dialogue with IT, engineering, and managerial skills. Particular attention is devoted to defining the roles of various design professionals involved in digital design teams, with a focus on the emerging figure of the accessibility expert. Through an applied and multidisciplinary approach that combines regulatory analysis, business process observation, and design experimentation inspired by participatory design principles, the thesis demonstrates how design can translate accessibility principles into operational, methodological, and formative tools, rooting them in the decision-making processes and daily practices of software design and development teams. In doing so, it promotes a design culture oriented toward inclusion and social responsibility. The numerous observation, experimentation, and training activities conducted and described in the thesis have allowed for the extraction of methods, tools, and final reflections aimed at making digital inclusion a concrete and shared practice. A key element of the research concerns the analysis of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (WCAG), international guidelines for web content accessibility. Despite their binding nature in the European and Italian spheres, the WCAG remain little known and rarely integrated in a systematic way into digital design contexts, where productivity-oriented practices prevail over inclusive compliance. The regulatory and operational practice analysis highlighted the need for tools capable of translating accessibility principles into concrete and contextualized operational procedures. From this need arises EasyWCAG, an experimental tool developed within the scope of the research to support designers, developers, and project managers in integrating accessibility criteria across all project phases. The tool proposes a mediation model between the regulatory and design dimensions, making the principles of the WCAG clearer, more usable, and applicable in real-world contexts. The original contribution of the thesis lies in the definition of a methodological model for inclusive design in the digital sphere, capable of combining legislative compliance, operational efficiency, and user experience quality. The model promotes a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach founded on training, awareness, and shared responsibility. In this perspective, accessible design is configured as a guiding principle for the development of inclusive solutions, recognizing that it is the project—and the culture sustaining it—that empowers people. The designer thus assumes the role of mediator between human needs, corporate performance objectives, technological constraints, and social responsibilities, orienting digital transformation toward an authentically inclusive dimension capable of generating value for all stakeholders involved.