Engaging IT students in co-design with people with intellectual disability

Current and emerging participative design practices are providing opportunities for people with intellectual disability to have a say in how technology can best support them and their individual needs. Yet technological experts and designers are not always confident to be included in co-design sessions with people with intellectual disability and often favour less inclusive projects to focus on. In this paper, we present lessons learnt from a series of co-design exercises aimed at designing mobile or web applications to support people with intellectual disability, including a reframing of the concept of reciprocity. We believe these lessons can serve as recommendations for IT experts or IT students, to be encouraged and enabled to design with people with intellectual disability, thus supporting a greater inclusion.