What is IT for Inclusion

Designing for people with special needs, especially cognitive and affective needs, can be challenging. Human-centered design (HCD), which inherently promotes user-inclusion and promises products that fit the users' needs, seems to be an optimal solution for such tasks. But can an HCD-approach be easily applied with special needs users? How much adaptation is necessary to perform classical HCD-techniques with users affected by certain difficulties? This chapter discusses the insights gathered and strategies adopted while applying human-centered design in the LITERACY-project, a project of the European Union aiming at improving social inclusion of youth and adults with dyslexia, by creating an interactive web-portal. Hopefully, this case study provides insight on and gives courage for inclusion of end-users even though—or particularly because—they have special needs.