Ghent Inclusive Design Meetup #1 Recap
Once in a while, we like to challenge ourselves at Eleven Ways. The idea of organizing a meetup — or dare I call it a mini conference? — kinda puts me out of my comfort zone. That didn’t hold me back to do it anyway. Lucikly, I received a lot of help from some of my best friends and the friendly brothers at Bothrs. In fact, I think it was about time that we had our first Inclusive Design meetup in Belgium!
If you couldn’t join us for this first edition, here’s a quick recap.
What’s it all about?
The first edition of the Ghent Inclusive Design Meetup was all about bringing together like-minded digital professionals in a casual setting of sharing, learning and enjoying a beer or a cocktail. 🍸
It #sux if your #ux is not accessible
We tried to bring the attendees a healthy mix of design, technical and inspirational talks, and I believe we succeeded at that.
In twenty-minute sessions, three speakers and industry experts shared a story, idea or something cool they’ve achieved.
The talks
Talk 1: Hidde de Vries — Six ways to make your site more accessible
Hidde is a front-end web developer and an accessibility consultant with a degree in philosophy. He currently works at the W3C, where he’s part of the Web Accessibility Initiative. He blogs at hiddevries.nl.
In his talk, Hidde showed us six important things that can make a difference to help you build sites that can be used by more people. From hiding content to focus management, he showed us some ways to get started on improving accessibility.
The web is accessible by default, but it doesn’t take a lot to produce inaccessible websites.
- Accessible Name and Description Computation
- Using JavaScript to trap focus in an element
- Front-End Performance: The Dark Side by Mathias Bynens · Fronteers
Hidde’s slides (‘Six ways to make your site more accessible’) are available at his own website. There is also a full transcript, if you prefer to read it.
Talk 2: Marc Walraven — Inclusive Design @ VRT
Next up on stage was Marc Walraven. Marc is a senior usability expert. He works at the VRT, where he’s in charge of their digital accessibility efforts.
Marc and I met way back, and have worked together quite a bit. In fact, he inspired me to do what I do today, so I was especially proud to have him at the meetup.
Beware of “The ghost of phase 2”
Marc convinced the audience that, if you want to achieve measurable results in a large-scale organization such as VRT, everyone in the team should be aware of the barriers & benefits.
To support his arguments, Marc showed us a very convincing video of a blind user struggling for almost three minutes to locate a simple button in a VRT app. What seemed like a trivial thing to fix, made a huge difference for screenreader users.
Talk 3: Gil and Stef Nimmegeers — Voice as an enabler for accessibility for everyone
Gil and Stef run a rapid-growing Digital Experience Studio called Bothrs.
In their talk, they offered us a glimpse into a future where Voice Interfaces will make human-computer interaction more convenient and inclusive. They showed us trend-setting examples like Newsbuddy, a Voice Shopping List and Siri Shortcuts.
The next big thing will be a lot small things
Talk 4: Johan Verstraeten — Closed Captions: inclusive for everyone
Johan is a deaf UX pioneer and a sign language ambassador. He runs a one-man design studio called Thinklusive.
Johan challenged the audience by asking if anyone could explain the difference between subtitling and captioning. In case you wonder:
- Subtitles only provide a written form of the spoken word.
- Closed Captions are designed to provide auditory information, such as background noise, music, sound effects etc. as well as spoken language.
He continued to talk about the added value of closed captioning. It helps you increase your user engagement by 50%, and thus has a huge return investment.
More than 75% of web videos are played in mute mode
Johan concluded by sharing a few do’s en don’ts for those who want to create closed captions themselves.
Thanks to everyone!
A big thank you to our inspiring speakers and everyone who made this first edition a success. And to Bothrs, for hosting the event, and to Eleven Ways - Digital Accessibility Lab, for sponsoring drinks and cocktails.
Lastly, a special thank you to the sign interpreters Ariane, Yvonne and Renske who helped make our event as inclusive as possible.
We put a 📷 photo gallery up at Meetup.com!
What’s next for the Ghent Inclusive Design Meetup?
In our next meetup (to be announced), we’d like to bring you even more inspiring stories. If you feel like talking about on of these topics, just get in touch with me:
- Inclusive UX/UI Design (Web, Mobile, Voice, AR/VR etc.)
- User research with people with a disability
- Workflows, best practices and methodologies
- Accessible design systems, front-end frameworks and other tools
- Up-to-date info on guidelines, legislation and compliance goals
- Building an accessibility culture in your organization
Oh, and in case you wonder, The GID Meetup is for everyone:
- UX/UI designers, strategists & researchers
- Product & service designers
- Web & app developers
- Community managers & online marketeers
- Product owners & project managers
- Everyone else interested (or involved) in Accessibility and/or Digital Equality.
Become a Meetup member to make sure you don’t miss the next one 😉 We hope to see you soon! 👋
Need help with accessibility?
In the meantime, if you need help achieving your digital accessibility goals, let’s chat. As a Certified Web Accessibility Specialist, Eleven Ways helps public services, NGOs, startups, and digital agencies to assess, improve, and perfect the accessibility of their digital products — from strategy to compliance.
