Research Synthesis and Share-out
Your study with people with disabilities has wrapped up. The analysis and synthesis process in accessibility studies does not differ from non-accessibility studies, but here are a few suggestions to ensure that your report makes a strong, lasting impact:
- Highlight participants’ identities. Highlighting participants’ identities helps stakeholders understand the populations you spoke with during the research process and provides necessary context for your findings. As you share this information, however, make sure that you protect the privacy of your participants, refraining from sharing sensitive information that might easily identify them in your report.
- Use videos when possible. For stakeholders who weren’t able to observe your sessions, video clips of participants using your product or talking about their experiences may be more powerful than photos or quotes. Watching participants react to the research process can help stakeholders build stronger empathy for the underinvested populations these participants represent, observe how people with disabilities use assistive technologies, and understand how exclusionary technology can negatively affect user experiences.
- Refrain from presenting accessibility findings at the end. When creating your report, choose whether you want accessible use cases and accessibility issues to be presented alongside data from able-bodied/minded folks, or in a separate “inclusive research” section. If you decide to present these cases and issues in a separate section, don’t place them at the end of the presentation. The section may be overlooked, and its placement might give the impression that inclusivity issues are an afterthought.
- Bring to light the differences in experiences. One of the most effective ways to highlight the “experience gap” is by comparing experiences between users with and without disabilities. An easy way to do this is by creating some type of measure as a point of comparison.
- Add alt-text and captions. Add alt-text to your images and captions on your videos in order to make your deliverables accessible. (See these tips from Google about making Google Slides more accessible.)
- Share results outside of your immediate team. Consider planning a share-out with your larger research team (i.e., those who did not work on the study) to highlight the benefits of inclusive research and encourage them to conduct similar research themselves. Also, consider sharing results with members of your organization to show the breadth of feedback that can be collected when researchers engage underinvested communities. This is feedback that otherwise wouldn’t be possible to obtain: without such feedback, researchers could be held back from creating a better, more inclusive product.
Dismissal of Research Findings
At this point in the research process, it’s unlikely that stakeholders will dismiss your findings, since you’ve brought your stakeholders along and ensured that you have buy-in from your teammates. Regardless of the upfront work you’ve done to ensure that your team is receptive to your findings and recommendations, pushback may still occur. Pushback is a common experience in all kinds of research processes, and it is no surprise that this experience persists within inclusive research. We’ve found the following strategies to be effective in ensuring that your findings land:
- Remind stakeholders of project goals. Highlight how this work speaks directly to your team and/or organizational priorities. It’s easy for stakeholders to forget what led you to conduct this research in the first place, especially when your takeaways might not be in line with previous findings.
- Speak to business needs and impacts. When possible, specify the impact of addressing the accessibility issues identified in your research. This could include cost savings or revenue generation. Work with colleagues to come up with specific metrics your team can use to track the progress of accessibility-specific product changes.
- Ensure recommendations are feasible for current and future roadmaps. Most likely, your research will uncover a range of issues related to accessibility. Try to organize and prioritize these issues to help your team develop a realistic execution plan. Work with your stakeholders to identify a short-term and long-term plan.
Stay tuned for more!
We’re actively trying to expand our guide to include many more communities beyond people with disabilities. Have ideas? Would you like to contribute? Let us know!
