How do you design for users and not the user? Accessibility talks to spark your imagination
In the tech community, there is a growing space for discussion about the very world tech is shaping.
Interestingly, the level to which attention is given to various members of society and their relationship with the tech industry seems to run parallel with their ability to be heard and their traditional visibility in the community — i.e. mentally disabled people are still given very little platform due to a range of biases against diseases of the brain, our lack of understanding, and a historical lack of visibility for these people in the community and in business. But this is changing. Accessibility in tech may still be a nascent concern for the majority, but there are increasing numbers of discussions being had about the way tech invites the full spectrum of human experience into what it offers.
For developers and designers alike, the irony in this relative silence towards accessibility is that designing and building with accessibility in mind opens up a world of opportunities in which to explore paths for better usability.
Constant optimisation lies at the heart of tech, but this is compromised when we do this without acknowledging the exciting role accessibility plays in this pursuit of excellence.
There are a range of great talks from last year on accessibility in tech, but London’s tech community, Skills Matter, is placing a strong emphasis on this through its selection of conference speakers. Here were five important talks from their conferences last year that may spark your imagination.
5. Adventures in Accessibility — Dafydd Henke-Reed
Principle Accessibility & Usability Consultant for AbilityNet, Dafydd spoke in July last year predominantly on the limitations of JavaScript on accessibility.
“When speaking to developers, my general sense is that people actually care.”
Dafydd spends the majority of the talk looking at how JavaScript can be better utilised in tandem with accessibility guidelines and practices. This is a great resource for JS developers who want to move towards an active pursuit of creating accessible internet applications.
“The problems we have with websites are the ones we create ourselves. Websites don’t start life broken.” Well said, Dafydd.
4. Experiencing Digital Accessibility — Jon Gibbins
“It’s an exciting field from an accessibility point of view because there is an overlap between the features that we have on these small screen devices and the kinds of assistive technology that people with disability have been using for years.” — Jon on working with mobile accessibility.
In this talk, accessibility consultant Jon Gibbins extrapolates on the idea of empathy as a pathway towards accessibility, leaning on the idea that accessibility implies empathy with an understanding of the barriers individuals face online. He looks at how adhering to guidelines does not go far enough to help you understand the user journey.
3. Designing and Building With Accessibility in Mind — Hung Truong
“If you try to give a good business reason for supporting accessibility, you might actually do some harm in saying, ‘Oh, there’s 0.1% of users actually using VoiceOver.’ The flipside of that is the actual value you are giving those few users is so immense, it cancels out.”
An iOS developer at Lyft, Hung Trong spoke last year on the lack of accessibility concerns in iOS development, which is concerning given the amount of emphasis Apple places on accessibility.
His talk focuses on various ways to address accessibility in iOS development as well as exploring techniques to run accessibility audits on apps.
2. Mutative Design. Designing for the User, not Users — Faiz Malkani
“What we do today is design for the user, wherein we classify two or three hundred million people into…five or six personas and we go on to design for those personas, not considering the underlying diversity of the human race.”
Speaking at droidcon London last year, Google Expert for Design Faiz Malkani spoke about something not many, if any, developers or designers have ever considered. How have we sold ourselves with the idea that we can classify over a billion users, with various languages, cultures, religions, ages, abilities and even phone generations and screen types into one single ‘user’? Surely, we need to be designing for users instead.
“We exclude a wide range of people and personas and even contexts…maybe somewhere with background noise or imperfect lighting. Including these design situations can make significant steps in providing an inclusive experience to all types of users.”
1. Applications Should Be For Everyone. It’s In Your Hands — Britt Barak
“It’s hard to get attached and related when we think about everyone.” So Developer Advocate at Nexmo, Britt Barak, decided to focus attention on coding for those we love. She gives an interesting insight into an app she built to help users identify real world objects with ML Kit before moving onto other best practices and principles underpinning the current state of developing for accessibility.
