The concepts of design for all, universal design, accessibility, inclusion, diversity, and other related terms, all share a similar core notion. They denote the importance of designing experiences, activities, services, and artifacts that are usable by everyone, regardless of their ability, disability, age, skills, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, income, or any other such factors. Design for all is essential to ensure justice, equity, and human rights. Given the importance services have in our society, they would especially benefit from design for all practices that ensures equity and equal access. Services, in this context, are defined malleably as: processes, actions, application of competence, or activities, performed by an entity to fulfill a need for another.

The importance of services and the compositions of their target groups vary significantly. It has been argued that public services are of high significance to society, and hence, should be accessible to and usable by everyone in society. Different governmental agencies have issued numerous directives to ensure equal access to public services, yet, in practice, many services still remain largely inaccessible. On the other hand, in the private sector, there have long been debates on whether private services should comply with accessibility standards, or if the market should be left to organically regulate the matter. With privatization and the increasing significance of private services, the stakes have been raised for these sectors. Private sector services have become akin to essential services that arguably need to be accessible to ensure equitable society. Financial accessibility is similarly a subject of contention between services providers needing to maintain their viability and unfolding international economic crises that can significantly impede access to even the most basic services. Regionally, there are divides between countries and populations in access to services based on location and geopolitics, the latest of which is around AI-based services, such as ChatGPT, which have been blocked in several regions around the world, leaving their populations behind in technological capabilities. When it comes to services deemed by some as non-essential, the debate on universal design becomes even more complex. Disagreements exist over whether games, VR, AR, serious games, gamification, and such services that combine utility and entertainment are required to be accessible and inclusive. Nonetheless, we see service providers not only ensuring the accessibility of their services, but also becoming pioneers in it. On the other hand, we see arguments that services are not meant to be accessible or inclusive to everyone. For example, that games require high utilization of different abilities and senses and are not compatible with disabilities. Yet, we also see the release of critically acclaimed games, playable by a wide range of individuals and inclusive of many people with disabilities. Overall, we see disagreements on what inclusion and design for all mean, how to design, implement, and evaluate it, what benefits can be drawn from it and for whom. This minitrack encouraged a wide range of submissions from any disciplinary backgrounds: empirical and conceptual research papers, case studies, and reviews that investigate design for all in the services context and push it forward.