Published on March 4, 2024, this article delves into Rockwell Automation’s significant strides in integrating inclusive design principles across its vast industrial automation portfolio, building upon the foundational concepts introduced in the first installment of this series. As global industries increasingly recognize the imperative of fostering diverse workforces and ensuring equitable access to technology, the focus on inclusive design has escalated from a niche consideration to a strategic business mandate. This second part explores concrete design solutions implemented by Rockwell Automation, emphasizing how the company is addressing the intricate challenges of creating industrial environments that are accessible, intuitive, and efficient for every user, regardless of physical ability, cognitive style, or background. The efforts detailed herein underscore a proactive commitment to enhancing user experience through thoughtful hardware design, modernized terminology, and robust software accessibility frameworks, setting a precedent for the broader industrial sector. The series will conclude with a third installment, covering additional activities and solutions that merit further dedicated exploration.
The Strategic Imperative of Inclusive Design in Industrial Environments
The industrial automation sector, a cornerstone of global manufacturing and infrastructure, is undergoing a profound transformation. With a market size projected to exceed $300 billion by 2027, the efficiency and reliability of industrial systems are paramount. However, the traditional approach to design in this domain has often overlooked the diverse needs of the human operators, engineers, and technicians who interact with these complex systems daily. This oversight is increasingly untenable given evolving global demographics and workforce dynamics.
The global workforce is becoming more diverse, encompassing a wider range of ages, abilities, and cultural backgrounds. The aging workforce, for instance, brings invaluable experience but may face challenges with legacy systems not designed for declining vision or dexterity. Simultaneously, a greater emphasis on attracting talent from underrepresented groups, including individuals with disabilities, necessitates a re-evaluation of how industrial equipment and software are designed. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 16% of the global population lives with a significant disability, highlighting a substantial segment of potential users and employees whose needs must be accommodated. Beyond ethical considerations, designing inclusively offers tangible business benefits, including reduced training costs, fewer errors, enhanced safety, and a broader talent pool. Studies suggest that companies prioritizing inclusive design often outperform their competitors in innovation and market reach. Rockwell Automation’s initiative, therefore, is not merely a compliance exercise but a strategic investment in future readiness and market leadership.
Engineering Hardware for Diverse Human Factors: A Deep Dive
Industrial automation hardware operates in some of the most demanding environments imaginable, from factory floors with extreme temperatures and vibrations to remote installations lacking optimal lighting. The expectation for these devices is uncompromising: flawless operation "anywhere, anytime, and all the time." This mandate poses unique challenges for inclusive hardware design, requiring solutions that are robust, reliable, and universally usable. Alex Mummert, a Senior Industrial Designer at Rockwell Automation, elaborated on the meticulous considerations guiding their hardware development.
Location and Ergonomics: Designing for Varied Contexts
Mummert highlighted the critical impact of physical placement, distinguishing between "on-machine" and "in-cabinet" installations. Standardizing information display across these varied contexts is crucial, ensuring that unique product options don’t inadvertently create usability issues in different scenarios. Rockwell Automation maximizes product accessibility by minimizing interface obstructions and optimizing viewing angles—both vertical and horizontal—to ensure legibility from diverse vantage points. This approach directly addresses the needs of operators who may be viewing equipment from awkward positions or with limited mobility.
Ergonomics plays a central role in this philosophy. Mummert emphasized designing for the "99th percentile" of the population. This means standardizing elements like grip points, pull forces, and space affordance to ensure that 99% of users can interact with the product without significant impediments. Such rigorous design mitigates the risk of strain, injury, and operational inefficiency. To validate these ergonomic considerations, Rockwell Automation conducts low-fidelity validations. An illustrative example is an ergonomics study evaluating an I/O module’s door-opening feature relative to adjacent cabling (Figure 1), ensuring that even small interactions are optimized for ease of use and safety. This proactive testing approach significantly reduces the potential for costly retrofits or user-induced errors in operational settings.
Physical Characteristics and Indicators: Clarity in Challenging Environments
The reality of industrial settings—cramped spaces, poor lighting, and dirty conditions—demands hardware that transcends these limitations. Mummert explained that products are designed with these variables in mind. Modifications such as adjusting cabling direction, maximizing interface legibility, and establishing a clear hierarchy for information, whether static or dynamic light indicators, are paramount. In environments where quick decisions are often necessary, ambiguous information can lead to significant safety hazards or production downtime.
The design of indicators and lights receives particular attention. Users must progressively understand a module’s status, with the most critical information immediately discernible. A significant advancement has been the development of updated wavelength guidance for LEDs, ensuring inclusive color affordance for users with vision impairments. Previously, overlapping color specifications for green and yellow LEDs could cause confusion, particularly for individuals with color vision deficiencies. By refining blue-green and yellow-green indicators, Rockwell Automation ensures that automation device statuses are unambiguously communicated. Furthermore, increasing the physical spacing between color LEDs enhances legibility in low-visibility conditions and for users with impaired vision, preventing indicators from blurring into a single, continuous color. Strategic LED placement also accounts for environmental factors like nearby cables and other modules, ensuring indicators remain visible and useful, especially in high-stress situations where rapid problem identification is crucial.
User-Interface Responsiveness and Holistic Product Lifecycle
User-interface responsiveness in hardware is another critical element. Mummert stressed the importance of clearly articulated visual or physical feedback confirming task completion. For example, a locking feature on a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) must provide "distinct and consistent feedback" whether locked or unlocked, even when operated with protective gear such as gloves. These gloves, essential for safety, reduce tactile sensation and add bulk, making precise manipulation challenging. Rigorous testing with such gear in simulated environments helps validate designs, preventing ergonomic headaches and ensuring usability in real-world scenarios.
The sheer scale of Rockwell Automation’s product portfolio—over 400,000 individual stock-keeping units (SKUs)—demands a cohesive design language. Each product must "look and feel like they are meant to work together," maintaining brand perception while solving diverse problems for diverse users. The entire product lifecycle, from unpacking and commissioning to daily use, maintenance, and replacement, is considered during the design phase. This holistic perspective ensures that inclusive design principles are embedded from conception through end-of-life, reflecting a profound commitment to user experience and product longevity. This comprehensive approach to hardware design is further explored by Mummert and Amber on the ROK Talk podcast by Rockwell Automation, offering deeper insights into hardware specifications and accessibility initiatives.
Modernizing Language: Rockwell Automation’s Inclusive Terminology Initiative
Beyond physical hardware, the language used in software interfaces, documentation, and internal communications significantly impacts inclusivity. The technology industry has historically perpetuated outdated and non-inclusive terms that can alienate users and employees. In the automation sector, this challenge is amplified by decades-old software and hardware solutions where customers are often reluctant to change anything that might disrupt established productivity. Recognizing this, Rockwell Automation has embarked on a multi-year initiative to evolve its terminology strategy, championed by Elena Dunne, Senior Manager of Industry Insights and a former terminologist.
A Strategic Shift in Language
The core objective is to ensure that all Rockwell Automation content—whether hardware, software, or web-based, internal or external—adheres to a modern, inclusive terminology strategy. As Dunne articulated, "a key aspect of any user interface is the terms it uses. A major goal of any user interface is to communicate." This communication becomes increasingly vital with an ever-diversifying global user base and employee population. The initiative targets terms that carry negative connotations or are rooted in discriminatory historical contexts, such as "master/slave," "blacklist/whitelist," or "dummy data," replacing them with neutral and precise alternatives like "primary/secondary," "allow list/deny list," and "placeholder data." This shift reflects a global movement within the tech industry towards more respectful and accurate language.
External and Internal Engagement for Broader Adoption
Rockwell Automation’s strategy for terminology modernization is multi-faceted, involving extensive external and internal engagement. Dunne’s involvement with "TerminOrgs," a consortium of terminologists from large organizations, provided a collaborative platform for identifying non-inclusive terms and developing alternatives. This external focus extended to proactive discussions with standards organizations, industry partners, and customers who shared similar concerns. To disseminate their efforts, Rockwell Automation launched a blog and a dedicated webpage (Figure 2) detailing preferred terminology alternatives, a list that continually evolves. This transparency aims to encourage broader industry adoption and foster a shared commitment to inclusive language. Highlighting their commitment, the initiative has been featured in "Bold Conversations" roundtable talks at Rockwell’s annual Automation Fair® tradeshow for two consecutive years, promoting dialogue on inclusive design and accessibility.
Internally, proactive and transparent communication has been paramount. The Terminology Review Board, spearheaded by Dunne, employs various tactics to keep employees informed and engaged. These include regular updates via an internal site, comprehensive FAQs, company-wide newsletters, and active discussions on internal social channels. This sustained communication effort helps embed the new terminology into the company’s culture and operational practices. A cross-functional working group, comprising five distinct workstreams, supports this extensive effort, ensuring a systematic approach to identifying, validating, and implementing terminology changes across the organization. Moreover, UX and product-development representatives are actively involved, helping to build "proactive checks" into the development process to prevent inclusive-design and accessibility issues from emerging in new products.
Weaving Accessibility into the Digital Fabric: The Flourish Design System
While hardware and terminology represent significant pillars of inclusive design, the digital interface of industrial automation software is equally critical. The challenge of retroactively updating decades-old industrial software solutions not initially designed for accessibility is substantial. Therefore, Rockwell Automation’s strategy focuses on embedding accessibility best practices and policies into new releases and ongoing development, particularly through its internal Flourish Design System. Jonathon Gulbrandsen, Design System Leader at Rockwell, detailed how Flourish (Figure 3) serves as a foundational tool for driving the adoption of accessible, inclusive design.
Prioritizing Key Accessibility Features
Building accessibility into a comprehensive design system requires strategic prioritization. Gulbrandsen explained that their initial focus centered on ensuring a proper contrast ratio within all common componentry, followed by robust keyboard accessibility. Keyboard accessibility, in particular, proved an "easy sell" to business leaders, as its benefits extend far beyond users with motor impairments. Power users—system designers and automation engineers who program complex operations—often prefer keyboard navigation for its speed and efficiency, reducing the physical and cognitive load associated with constant mouse use over long workdays. This confluence of benefits for both power users and users with impairments created a compelling win-win scenario for leadership.
For contrast ratio, the strategy was anchored in compliance. Rockwell Automation integrated a strict requirement into its component-design process: every component must meet at least AA WCAG 2.1 standards for graphics and UI components, with a commitment to striving for AAA standards for text. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 are internationally recognized standards for web accessibility, outlining specific criteria to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. Adhering to these standards builds customer and user confidence, demonstrates a commitment to modern best practices, and aligns with the needs of an increasingly diverse workforce.
An Evolving Framework for Future-Ready Design
Gulbrandsen emphasized that this work is ongoing and continuously evolving. Each component within the Flourish Design System documentation site includes a dedicated accessibility section, ready for expansion as new capabilities are developed. A significant upcoming development is making the design system "themeable," allowing products to offer various visual presentations, such as dark or high-contrast themes. These options cater to a broader audience, including users with visual impairments or those who simply prefer different visual modes for comfort or environmental conditions. By embedding accessibility directly into the design system, Rockwell Automation ensures that these critical considerations are integrated at the earliest stages of product development, rather than being treated as an afterthought. This proactive approach minimizes rework, accelerates development cycles, and consistently delivers more inclusive products to the market.
Broader Implications and a Future-Forward Vision
Rockwell Automation’s multi-faceted commitment to inclusive design—encompassing hardware, terminology, and software design systems—positions the company as a leader in creating more equitable and efficient industrial environments. By addressing the diverse needs of its global workforce and customer base, Rockwell Automation is not only upholding ethical responsibilities but also forging a competitive advantage.
The implications of these initiatives are far-reaching. By designing hardware for the 99th percentile, standardizing inclusive terminology, and integrating WCAG compliance into its software, Rockwell Automation is enhancing user safety, reducing operational errors, and improving overall productivity across industrial operations. This comprehensive approach reflects a deep understanding that inclusive design is not merely a feature but a fundamental aspect of product quality and corporate responsibility. It aligns seamlessly with broader Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) objectives, demonstrating a commitment to social equity and responsible business practices.
Furthermore, Rockwell Automation’s proactive engagement with industry consortiums, standards bodies, and public forums like Automation Fair® signals a desire to influence and elevate industry-wide accessibility standards. Their efforts could serve as a blueprint for other industrial technology providers, fostering a broader ecosystem of inclusive solutions. As the industrial landscape continues to evolve, driven by advancements in AI, IoT, and automation, the human element remains central. Ensuring that these technologies are accessible to all users will be critical for maximizing their potential and fostering sustainable growth. The ongoing journey, which will include further exploration of Rockwell Automation’s external web presence, localization efforts, and other software standards in Part 3 of this series, underscores a sustained commitment to embedding inclusive design as a core principle for years to come.
