2.2 Understand user requirements or constraints, resolving barriers to access

Understand the audience and their requirements, remove their constraints and barriers, and give them an equal role in decision making.

Audience evaluation: Machine-testable
Identify primary and secondary target users. Evaluate and define their needs through quantitative and/or qualitative research, testing, or analytics. Ensure your users and affected communities are consistently and closely involved in the research and testing process.
User constraints: Machine-testable
Account for potential user constraints, such as the device age, operating system choice or version, browser, Virtual Private Network (VPN) use, and connection speeds when designing and assessing the quality of user experiences.
Barriers and access: Machine-testable
Conduct internal and user research to identify whether a technical, material, or human constraint might require adaptations to reduce barriers or improve access to content.
Barrier removal: Human-testable
Remove identified barriers to access. These can include deceptive design patterns, accessibility issues, or other pain points.
Seat at the table: Human-testable
Assign all involved parties, including users, an equitable role in the decision-making process when undertaking research, identifying needs, or iterative design work.

Accessibility
Understanding the needs of your audience through accessibility and trauma-informed research will help you prioritize design improvements to boost accessibility beyond the basics.
Conversion
Meeting audience requirements increases the likelihood that they will use it regularly and recommend it to others, improving its adoption rate and reputation.
Economic
Responding to the needs of your audience means they are more likely to convert and purchase.
Environment
Undertaking research to identify real user needs and behaviour means developers can avoid wasting time, effort, and emissions on building unnecessary features.
Performance
Use user research to identify UX bottlenecks that cause user abandonment. Fixes can be measured, tested, and evaluated to further improve performance and reduce emissions through removing those bottlenecks and inefficiencies.
Privacy
Assessing user needs and being minimal with further information requests will help you comply with privacy legislation.
Social Equity
Improving UX with compatibility in mind means products or services work better for users who might otherwise face various barriers to accessing content – such as older devices, low-bandwidth environments, or restrictive territories, language. This reduces e-waste and improves equity if older equipment meets needs for longer.