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.

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/

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

Innovation and accessibility

I find it fascinating to think about how society can address grand challenges. One common approach appears to be to have a competition. 

In USA, challenge.gov is asking students or others to contribute to different challenges. It's conducted as a competition, and in some cases this also includes accessibility issues.

In Sweden we have a similar approach for accessibility: "Innovation for all" is a competiton where the Swedish Post and Telecom (PTS) authority fund projects that can produce innovations in the area of Accessibility in Information communicaation technology (ICT) and related areas.

We are currently funded by PTS and is contributing to Innovation for all. We are working on a service that will support webdesigners to understand accessibility challenges, and how to work with tools such as Web Content Accessability Guidelines (WCAG). PTS is supporting participants with various workshops to address business modelling and launch of services. Thay also have insight in the design process.

• On which levels are the solutions that students and others come up with with limited funding?
• How can we raise the effect that a certain solution gives?
• How can governments or other stakeholder successfully gather the right competence to solve grand challenges?
• How are ideas taken up on? Do they become working services?

Discrimination law

In Sweden, there is a proposal of a new law concerning discrimination. This is intented to  adress services that lack accessibility for people with a disability.

The discrimination law proposal

Computer suggesting tastes

Computers can support creativity, also in the kitchen! 
I think this is a great example of how computers can support creativity, and still make creativity something fun and essentially human. Its is like computational music composition that support musicians to try new sounds as a startingpoint for their creativity. Computational support can extend peoples mind and speed up the road to new associations? Distributed cognition it is? :-)

TV and accessibility

Swedish Television is working on various aspects of accessibility on their Play site. We hope that other organisations that communicate with video will follow. One day this will be standard. And there will be lots of use, also useful for people without disabilities.

The video is in swedish.