Representative Users

Study participants who share the relevant characteristics of the population for whom a technology or solution is being designed. In accessibility research, this means including people with the actual disabilities being addressed rather than substitutes like blindfolded sighted users or able-bodied participants. Research has shown that non-representative users often exhibit different interaction strategies, command usage patterns, and navigation behaviors than representative users—even when surface-level metrics appear similar. The difficulty of recruiting representative users is not considered sufficient justification for excluding them from studies that claim efficacy for people with disabilities.