Monday, April 28, 2014

Accessibility is a human right and inclusive design is our effort to get there.

Sandi Wassmer  described this difference 13 dec, 2011.

"Web accessibility is about human rights. Inclusive design is about making a product fit for purpose. Big difference. More so, Web Accessibility in its current guise seems determined to make every last bit of technology accessible to every human being on earth. It asserts rights on behalf of disabled people and puts these before regular folk and before technical innovation. So, what's happening is that regular folk and technical innovation have moved on swiftly without Accessibility. To quote Ian Pouncey, "Accessibility is for everyone. It's just that 80% of people get it for free". I agree with Ian wholeheartedly. However, what most people understand Accessibility to be is how it is defined by the W3C, which is that "Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web". But that's not all. What about Design? Design is about creating products and services that people can use and since websites and web applications are things that people use and interact with, things that change and adapt through this use and interaction, Inclusive Design and not just Access is what is desperately needed."


 Read more at action for blind people.


Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Lovely representation of the design process



 

Squiggle by Damien Newman. He could have had this as a tattoo. IDEO has this on their T-shirts.
  
http://v2.centralstory.com/about/squiggle/

Monday, April 14, 2014

Unaccessible experience design

Spotify faced challenges when updateing their service to an improved look. Despite the great interface, people with reduced sight can no longer use the sevice.

Read more at aftonbladet news article (in Swedish):
http://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/article18712503.ab

Accessibility is a democratic challenge, and media needs to be accessible. This was discussed during Mg2014, in Gothenburg. (Mediadagarna) (In Swedish):
 http://www.dyslexi.org/tidningen-las-skriv/medier-vem

There is already great competence availible to support accessibility. Begripsam, a project about cognitive accessibility, is funded by Arvsfonden. In this project, people with cognitive disabilties are paid to contribute with the their knowledge to international and swedish standards.  (In swedish).
 http://www.dyslexi.org/tidningen-las-skriv/vi-vill-ha-en-begripligare-varld-9772