Digital Identity for Inclusion: Practical Ideas for Improved Accessibility

Although digital identity management paves the way for all digital interactions, it seems to be one of the most intimidating challenges for people who do not adhere to conventional data structures. For inclusion and accessibility to improve, IT architects should not look at identity models as just database specifications, but as user agreements. One good way to make the transition is to disconnect legal identification from the digital identity in the identity and access management (IAM) layer.

My experience in implementing enterprise solutions has demonstrated to me that many legacy systems restrict users’ choices by either forcing them to choose male or female or by insisting on names strictly matching names mentioned on legal documents. By implementing the feature “name in use” in the user interface, while keeping legal names on the back end, organizations can create a more inclusive experience without breaking the law.

Inclusion also applies to security measures employed. Most multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods depend heavily on visual information and quick reflexes from the user, such as typing the verification code shown on a small display or solving a visual puzzle. In contrast, a more inclusive approach uses hardware keys compliant with the FIDO2 standard and biometric systems. Thus, using either a hardware token or an authorized device is much more convenient for users with visual or mobility issues compared to traditional CAPTCHAs and verification codes sent via SMS.

Digital identity management done well removes barriers instead of adding them. Too many identity systems assume every user has a smartphone, a stable address, government ID, and full fluency with multi-step verification. That assumption locks out the people who need digital services the most: elderly users, people with disabilities, refugees, and anyone without a conventional paper trail.

The fix is to build identity systems around multiple paths to the same trust level, not one rigid path everyone must follow. A person should be able to prove who they are through a combination of methods—biometric, knowledge-based, or vouched for by a trusted community organization—rather than get stuck because they lack one specific document.

A practical example: a city government rolling out digital benefits access could pair its standard ID verification with an in-person option at libraries or community centers, where a trained staff member verifies identity and links it to the same digital account. The person still gets full digital access afterward. They just aren’t excluded because the sign-up flow assumed a smartphone and a driver’s license.

That’s the real opportunity in identity management right now. It’s not just a security layer. It’s the front door to every other service, and a front door that only opens for some people isn’t doing its job.

Sameer Somal

Founder & CEO, Blue Ocean Global Technology

I believe that digital identity could help with inclusion by eliminating irrelevant obstacles instead of setting up another technological obstacle. It has been 10 years since I have been dealing with digital interactions, and I have seen for myself how easy it is to create assumptions that everyone sees well, remembers passwords, uses a new smartphone, and can complete complicated authentication steps.

One example of an application of this concept could be in a service where a verified individual is able to store his or her accessibility preferences within their profile. Individuals requiring large fonts, captioning, a certain language, or even a specific mode of communication do not have to repeatedly inform the service every time they access it; rather, their identity will establish who they are, and their preferences make their experience consistent.

Privacy is another vital consideration in this case. Inclusivity does not mean that every conceivable bit of information must be collected. Companies must retain only that which is necessary, justify its necessity, and allow for personal choice.

I would also go further than just the login screen. An organization can provide an accessible identity system yet make for a frustrating website or support process for that user. The ultimate test is watching actual users going through the complete process and identifying where they stumble, stop, or require assistance. If the identity management system is able to address one of these challenges without introducing another, then it’s successful.

Identity management sounds like a security topic, but in practice it is an access topic. Who gets an account of their own, and what that account is allowed to see, decides who is able to take part.

Our customers are real estate brokerages, and the pattern we run into constantly is the shared login: one office password that everybody uses. This means the part-time coordinator, the assistant who works two mornings a week, and the agent who handles a handful of files a year either get full access to everything or get nothing and end up asking somebody else to do things on their behalf. That second group is quietly shut out of the system, and it tends to be the people with the least power in the office.

The practical fix is boring and it works. Give everybody an account of their own, then make permissions fine-grained enough that access is not an all-or-nothing choice. When a brokerage moves off a shared password, the people who gain most are the ones who used to depend on a colleague to see their own paperwork.

We had one office where an agent had been emailing every document to the office manager for years because she had no password herself. Once she had her own account with the right permissions, her file turnaround dropped by 60% and nobody had to be the bottleneck.

Inclusion in digital services is mostly a matter of not forcing people to borrow somebody else’s identity.

I’m Runbo Li, Co-founder & CEO at Magic Hour.

Digital identity management is the single biggest unlock for making services accessible to people who’ve been invisible to the system. The core problem isn’t technology. It’s that millions of people can’t prove who they are in the way institutions demand, so they get locked out of banking, healthcare, education, and creative tools entirely.

Here’s a practical example that shaped how I think about this. When we built Magic Hour, we made a deliberate choice: you can start creating with just an email. No government ID upload, no credit check, no phone number verification tied to a specific carrier. That sounds simple, but it meant creators in countries with unreliable telecom infrastructure, people without traditional banking, teenagers with a vision but no credit card—they could all get in the door. We saw signups from over 100 countries within months. A huge portion of our early users would have been filtered out by a heavier identity gate.

Now scale that thinking to something like healthcare portals or government services. The idea I’d push is what I call “progressive identity,” borrowing from progressive disclosure in UX design. You start with the lightest possible credential to give someone access to basic services. Then as trust builds, as they interact more, you layer in verification only when the action truly requires it. Need to browse public health info? Email is enough. Need a prescription? Now verify. Need to access your full medical record? Add biometric or document verification at that point.

This flips the default. Instead of “prove everything before you get anything,” it becomes “get value first, verify when stakes rise.” That one shift would bring millions of people into digital services who are currently standing outside the gate because the front door demands too much, too soon.

The best identity systems don’t ask “how do we verify everyone?” They ask “how do we include everyone, then verify what matters?”

Digital identity can make digital services more inclusive by linking verified identity with user-controlled interface resilience. A useful example is letting identity preferences automatically trigger fallback experiences when systems detect barriers such as failed form submissions, repeated navigation loops, or abandoned verification attempts. Instead of pushing the same experience harder, the service could switch to guided steps, assisted completion, or a lower-complexity path based on preapproved preferences.

I like this approach because it treats accessibility as recovery design, not just ideal-state design. Real inclusion depends on what happens after confusion appears. Teams that map those failure moments, assign ownership, and measure resolution quality tend to build stronger trust than teams obsessed only with polished entry points. Digital identity becomes valuable when it helps services respond intelligently under stress, which is where many users decide whether a platform respects them.

Digital identity can improve accessibility when it reduces repeated proof, not when it adds another complicated login layer. The useful version lets a person prove a specific fact once and reuse that proof in places where verification is currently slow, confusing, or document-heavy.

One practical example is eligibility for accessible digital services. A user may need to prove student status, residency, age, disability accommodation, or professional accreditation across multiple platforms. Today that often means uploading documents again and again, waiting for manual review, or sharing more personal information than the service actually needs.

A better identity system would allow selective proof: “this person qualifies” without exposing the full underlying record every time. In blockchain terms, the point is not to put private data on-chain. The point is to let trusted issuers create credentials that users can control and present with less friction.

The design risk is real. If the wallet, recovery process, or consent screen is confusing, accessibility gets worse. So the product has to explain what is being shared in plain English and offer recovery paths that normal people can use.

Identity should make access quieter and easier. If it makes users feel like they need a technical manual, it failed.

The inclusion problem in identity management usually isn’t the login screen, it’s what happens before someone ever reaches it. Systems built around a single verification path, a specific ID type, a specific document format, a specific phone number format, quietly lock out anyone who doesn’t fit that one path cleanly. Working across multiple SSO providers taught me that flexibility at the identity layer is what actually determines who gets left out.

A practical example: instead of hard-coding one verification method, federate identity across multiple providers a user might already have access to, a work account, a Google account, a government-linked ID where available, so the system accepts whichever path someone can actually use, not the one path an engineering team defaulted to. Accessibility here isn’t a UI feature added later. It’s a decision made at the identity architecture level, before a single screen gets designed.

The most underrated accessibility tool in digital finance is the self-custody wallet. Not as a payment method, but as an identity layer.

At Nika Finance, we onboard users purely through wallet-based verification. There is no name. No address. No documents. The wallet is the identity. Users create a key pair in their device’s secure enclave, authenticate with biometrics, and that is sufficient to access spot trading, perpetuals, staking, yield, and prediction markets. The entire financial surface opens with nothing but a cryptographic signature proving you control a private key.

This matters for a structural reason most people miss. A billion people globally lack government-issued identity documents, or hold documents that do not map cleanly across borders. Traditional fintech onboarding requires a passport or national ID, a proof of address, sometimes a credit check. Each gate excludes another cohort. Self-custody architecture removes every gate except the ability to generate a key pair on a smartphone.

The wallet becomes portable proof of personhood without requiring a centralized issuer to verify you exist. You can cross borders, switch devices, interact with services in jurisdictions where you hold no formal status, and your financial identity stays intact because it is cryptographic rather than documentary.

The trade-off is that you must custody your own keys. But for users without identity documents, custodying keys is preferable to being excluded entirely. Non-custodial is not just a security model. It is an inclusion model.

Most identity checks assume you can type and remember a password. That leaves out a lot of older adults and anyone who just isn’t comfortable online. Plenty of adults never adopted apps at all, and that’s not going to change. Voice can work as an accessible identity layer too. When someone calls in, confirming who they are can happen through conversation instead of a form. It doesn’t need a smartphone or a stored password to work. This shows up daily on home service calls. An older homeowner trying to book a repair often can’t manage an app, but can answer a few spoken questions in under a minute. Digital services could offer voice confirmation as an optional path alongside typing. Shaky hands or low vision shouldn’t lock someone out just because typing is the only option. The call still ends with the appointment set, no login required.

This is an idea rather than a deployment I can point at.

The place people get excluded from digital services is usually the front door. Identity design tends to assume a smartphone, a personal email address, reliable connectivity and the confidence to recover an account when something goes wrong. Plenty of people have none of those, including many in the frontline roles served by the organisations we work with.

The practical idea I would push is proportionate verification. Match the strength of the check to the risk of the action, rather than applying the strongest available check to everything. Reading information about your own entitlement does not need what approving a payment needs, and treating them alike excludes people for no gain.

Alongside that, keep more than one recovery route, including one that does not depend on owning a particular device, and avoid forcing account creation where a service could be delivered without one.

As a personal injury attorney, I see how people with disabilities or language barriers get shut out of legal processes that are supposed to serve them. Digital identity management can fix this by letting someone verify who they are once and then access multiple services without repeating the same exhausting process.

Here’s a real example from my world: when we filed claims against public entities in New Brunswick, clients with mobility issues or cognitive challenges had to physically appear, produce documents, and navigate government offices just to get their case started. A portable, verified digital identity could let those same clients authenticate themselves remotely and access filing systems, court portals, and benefits programs without leaving home.

The inclusion angle matters most for vulnerable populations. Through our Helping Hand to the Homeless initiative, we saw how hard it is for homeless individuals to access services when they lack consistent documentation. A digital identity framework built around verified credentials, rather than physical paperwork, could open doors to housing, legal aid, and medical services for people who currently get turned away simply because they can’t produce a utility bill.

The legal world is slow to change, but this is one shift worth pushing for hard.

Most “digital identity” conversations are about verifying people harder. I’d argue the bigger inclusion win is often the opposite — asking for less. Every field you put between a person and the thing they came for is a filter, and it quietly screens out people with less time, less confidence, worse connections, or less patience for handing over personal data they don’t see why you need.

Here’s the practical version from my own product. On Pitch.ac, you don’t make an account to play. You type a name and you’re at the table — solo, or in a private room by sharing a four-letter code. No email, no password, no verification wall. That single decision does more for inclusion than any feature we could bolt on later, because it means the people who bounce off sign-up forms — and a lot of people do — simply don’t bounce.

So the idea is this: treat identity as something you collect only when it earns its place, not by default. Ask for the minimum a task actually needs. Progressive, not front-loaded. The most inclusive identity system is frequently the one that gets out of the way.

Identity verification is where our patient portal quietly loses people. The assumption behind most of these systems is one adult, one email address, one smartphone, in sole charge of their own affairs. A large share of the people I care for do not match that description, and some of them match it one month and not the next.

The practical example I would offer is proxy access. An older patient whose daughter manages the appointments, or an adult child helping a parent after surgery, will otherwise end up sharing a password. That is a privacy problem and a support burden the first time the account locks. Building proper delegated access, where the helper holds their own credentials with a scope the patient sets and can revoke, is an accessibility feature even though it looks like a security feature. It also leaves a clean record of who did what, which a shared password destroys.

The second piece is offering more than one route to verify. When the only path is a code sent to a phone the patient does not have or cannot hear, the service is closed to them, whatever the accessibility statement says.

Portal activation among our patients over 65 reached about 55% after we added both.

The most overlooked feature of digital identity management in 2026 is to treat AI algorithms as an Accessibility Persona. I have noticed that when folks set their corporate digital identity in a way designed for generative engines, the factual accuracy of accessibility information cited by voice assistant algorithms (used heavily by visually impaired and cognitively diverse populations) increases from about 50% to over 95%.

Treating “Robot Audiences” as an Accessibility Persona. To drive inclusion, UX and tech leaders need to specify that their digital service will be accessed via one or more AI intermediaries (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Voice UIs, etc.). If their digital identity isn’t structured around the principles of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), the output of these algorithms will omit or hallucinate the inclusion/accessibility info.

In one example I am familiar with, a healthcare network went through an “AI-Defined” process to restructure their digital narrative with strong considerations for structured data, long-tail semantic strategies, and amplification of their accessibility offering on other high-authority platforms, such that the AI systems were trained on their specialized inclusive healthcare services. The result was that the accurate referencing of their digital identity describing accessibility info (wheelchair accessibility, availability of ASL interpreters, etc.) went from 2 in 10 AI prompts to 9 in 10. By seeding the signals that algorithms consumed, they massively improved the odds that marginalized users would receive safe and accurate info from their assistive tech.

Blockchain Verification to Protect Vulnerable Groups. Inclusion also demands that targeted or vulnerable groups be protected from AI misinformation generated at scale. A pattern I’ve seen emerging in more sensitive verticals is the use of blockchain tech to establish a tamper-proof digital signature for any official string of characters. When a brand’s digital identity is anchored on the blockchain with a reliable timestamp, users and the assistive AI tools they interact with can cryptographically verify that an arbitrary statement, prompt, or claim did indeed come from the brand. If you establish this ecosystem and verify that service calls, updates, and prompts come from the blockchain-verified original, then you protect more sensitive underserved groups from disenfranchisement and scamming via fabricated AI narratives.

Digital identity management can be a powerful inclusion tool when it is built around persistence. Many services offer accessibility settings, but too few remember them in a reliable way. If verified identity securely carries those choices forward, users spend less time adjusting interfaces and more time completing the task that brought them there. That is where accessibility starts to feel practical instead of performative.

I would apply that idea to emergency information systems. A resident logging in during a crisis could automatically receive alerts in plain language, high-contrast views, text-first updates, and compatible document formats based on saved preferences. In urgent moments, that continuity can directly improve comprehension, action, and safety.

Accessibility usually gets treated as a separate requirement, but I think it works better when you build it into the experience from the beginning. We saw that in work we did with Adobe around Livefyre, where screen-reader support was part of the product experience rather than something to bolt on afterward.

The same idea applies to digital identity. If someone has to navigate a complicated sign-in, verification, or account-recovery process just to access a service, that can become an accessibility barrier in itself. I’d look at whether people can authenticate and manage their identity using the tools and interaction methods they already rely on, while still keeping the security requirements intact. For me, inclusion comes down to not making the user understand how the system works before they can use it. The technology behind identity can be complicated; the experience of proving who you are shouldn’t have to be.

Cache Merrill

Founder, Zibtek

It is possible for identity systems to actually add to the problems that people face, rather than reducing them. People have to go through the process of creating an account, remembering passwords, inputting personal details, verifying themselves, and going through multiple screens in order to access a service. This becomes especially problematic for those who have disabilities.

To me, digital identity must reduce any unnecessary effort. This could be where I am accessing healthcare online, online learning, or any other service provided to the public. I could authenticate myself through a trusted digital identity provider and then, at my discretion, share certain data with other systems. This would mean not having to enter all the information repeatedly when filling in different forms. Each of these forms will get only the data required by them.

For me, accessibility is not just about the login page. An authentication method may still be challenging or even impossible for people with visual impairment, physical disability, hearing problems, reading difficulty, or any other type of disability. There should be options available that are easy to use and understand for everyone.

Based on my knowledge and experience in engineering and products, I would have looked at the whole process, including signup, login, verification, password recovery, and forms. The question that I would ask in every step of this process is whether the user actually needs to go through this.

Technology should solve problems rather than create new ones. If there is a way for the system to verify some fact once, I don’t think it’s necessary to make the user prove it in five ways.