11 minutes
Requirements, defaults and the burden they create Every requirement is a task assigned to someone outside the building. How to see where a design puts the work, change the defaults that decide who gets through, and write down the trade-offs you accept.
What you’ll be able to do Examine a proposed design for the burden it places on people — its steps, documents, channels, timing and defaults — and record the trade-offs accepted, who carries them and who decided. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: How should the team handle the choice? Document a next step for Requirements, defaults and the burden they create: Pick one requirement in a process you work on. Write down the task it assigns a person, who that task is heaviest for, and whether the division already holds what it asks for. If the requirement stays, write the trade-off in one sentence with a name and a date. Burden is something a design produces Every requirement in a service is a task assigned to a person outside the building. Find a document. Take a morning off work. Arrange a ride. Ask a relative to explain a paragraph. Repeat a difficult account to a fourth staff member. Get a signature witnessed. None of these appear in a project budget, and together they decide who completes a process and who does not.
The same design distributes that burden unevenly. One document request is a small errand for one household and a two-week project for another: for someone without a car, without stable housing, without a scanner, without paid leave, or without a supporter who can take a call at eleven in the morning. When a process assigns the same task to everyone, it does not produce the same result for everyone. It produces the same result for the people whose lives resemble the one the design assumed.
Naming this is what changes designs. “We treat everyone the same” is a true statement about a process, and it is a claim about fairness that the process cannot support on its own. The intercultural framework this program uses calls that position minimization: difference is acknowledged but treated as small enough to deal with later. Moving toward acceptance and adaptation is practical work here, not a matter of attitude. You look at where the burden actually falls, you change the defaults that put it there, and you write down what you could not change and who is carrying it. That describes a design, never a person.
Where does this design put the work? Staff check information the division already holds instead of asking the person to send it again.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else Before returning a packet as undeliverable, staff check division records for a newer address.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else A notice is mailed and emailed, with a phone number answered during the hours the notice lists.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else A person must get a letter from a clinic confirming something already in their file.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else A person must explain the same circumstances to three separate units.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else The response window counts from the date printed on the letter, not from when it arrives.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else No interpreter is arranged, so a person's teenage child interprets a question about their health.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else The form can only be completed during office hours, so a working adult asks a neighbor to handle it for them.
Choose a category The division carries it The person carries it It is pushed onto someone else Check matches Reset Five defaults that decide who gets through without asking Channel Format Timing Proof Who decides
Which way of reaching the service works without extra effort, and which ways exist only for people who know to ask? A default channel is a decision about who has an easy path. Offer more than one, and name them in the first paragraph rather than the last.
Real text, a clear reading structure, documents that work with a screen reader and still print cleanly, and a version that can go to an interpreter ahead of time. Format decided at the start costs little. Format repaired at the end tends to break something else.
A window measured from when a letter is likely to arrive, not from the date printed on it. Time to read, ask a question, gather a document, arrange an interpreter and respond. A reminder before an automatic closure rather than a notice after it.
What a person must produce to be believed, whether the division already holds it, and what happens to someone who cannot produce it. Every document requirement is worth the question: what decision does this change, and could staff confirm it another way?
Whether the design assumes one adult acting alone. A household that decides together, a person who uses supported decision-making, or a family where a different member handles letters than handles calls all meet a single-person design as a barrier. Ask how the design recognizes the people a person has chosen to involve.
Write the trade-off down where the decision lives What you can change You control whether a trade-off is recorded in the charter, the decision log or the requirements, with the name of the person who made it and the date it will be reviewed.
What to watch for Do not let a deferred access decision disappear into a schedule. An access path postponed without a record, an owner and a date has, in practice, been canceled quietly.
Your next step In the next design decision you take part in, write one sentence: what we chose, who it leaves out, what we will offer them meanwhile, who decided, and when we will look at it again.
Design moves that need nobody's permission Stop asking people for information the division already holds.
Write deadlines as dates, and set the window from the day a letter is likely to arrive.
Put plain language and readable structure into the requirements, not into a cleanup task at the end.
Offer more than one way to complete a step, and say so near the top.
Send materials early enough that a person can read them, ask a question and arrange an interpreter before the date that matters.
Ask what a person needs in order to take part, with examples of what is available, instead of asking about their condition.
Let people save and return to any request that takes longer than one sitting.
Send a reminder before an automatic closure, in the channel the person already uses.
Private reflection, kept by you and not collected anywhere: think of one requirement in a process you work on. What does it actually ask a person to do, who could be burdened or excluded by it, and what would accessibility mean here beyond the legal minimum?
Try a situation A division project team must choose the default channel for a new request process. An online-only path is cheaper to run and can be built in the time available. Keeping a staffed phone path and a mailed paper path would cost more and push the launch back by a quarter. Discovery showed that the people most likely to need the service include older adults, people without reliable internet at home, people who read English as a second or third language, and people who rely on a family member or supporter to complete forms.
How should the team handle the choice? Launch online only, and add phone and paper paths later if demand for them appears.
Treat it as an explicit trade-off: name who an online-only default leaves out, cost the alternatives, and decide with the sponsor on the record. If other paths are deferred, write down who carries the delay, how they will be served in the meantime, who decided and when it will be revisited.
Launch online only, with a line on the page inviting anyone who needs another way to request an accommodation.
Consider your choice Try another response Carry this forward Every requirement in a service is a task someone has to complete: find a document, take time off, arrange a ride, ask for help, explain something again. Burden is something a design produces, and it falls unevenly.
Defaults do most of the work. The default channel, format, time window, proof and assumed decision-maker determine who gets through without having to ask for anything.
“The same for everyone” describes the process, not the result. Seeing where the burden actually lands, and changing what puts it there, is how a design moves past minimization.
Legal accessibility requirements set a floor for the finished service. Design asks a further question: what would make this usable without a special request in the first place?
Trade-offs are a normal part of public work. The one that causes lasting harm is the trade-off nobody wrote down, with no owner and no date to look at it again.
A scenario about choosing a default channel, a sorting exercise on where a design puts the work, a tab set on five defaults, and a knowledge check on why exclusion rarely shows up as demand.
Pick one requirement in a process you work on. Write down the task it assigns a person, who that task is heaviest for, and whether the division already holds what it asks for. If the requirement stays, write the trade-off in one sentence with a name and a date.
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