The inventors of Zoom could not have predicted the level of use during COVID lockdowns. It is one of the easiest to use and one reason it is popular with business and families. It also has provision for live captioning for people who have difficulty hearing. However, the purpose of video platforms is to see who you are talking to. But what if they are a fuzzy block of faces? Here are some tips on Zoom for people with vision loss.
Sheri Byrne-Haber’s has some tips to make Zoom meetings more equitable for people with vision loss.
If you send out presentation materials in advance, people using screen readers can download and magnify them. That way, they don’t have to ask the presenter “can you make that bigger?”
If you embed text in images they just pixelate when they are magnified. That is, all you can see are pixels – dots.
Use good contrast. Low contrast is still difficult to read with a screen reader. Larger does not make it clearer. Neon colours are difficult for some autistic people. Best is off white with charcoal or navy blue. Stark black and white is not best.
No fancy fonts and make them a decent size. No Italics. Bold or colour change is better for emphasis.
Byrne-Haber has more detail in her blog post and it is worth a read. As she says: Don’t be the barrier. Be the solution.
Universal design is a thinking process. Once you start incorporating these ideas into presentations it starts to become second nature.
When a government department or access committee starts talking about access maps and map accessibility, where do you begin? Of course there are consultants to help with this, but it’s good to have some idea of what to put in the brief. It’s also a good idea to know if the right thing has been delivered. A toolkit or guide for maps would be great but there’s a little to be found in lay language.
Technology moves fast. So toolkits and guides for digital maps soon become out of date. Another problem is they can’t stop software updates from stripping accessible features. And then there is is the issue of inadvertently uploading or linking inaccessible content on websites. But not all is lost.
Access maps and map accessibility are distinct areas of endeavour. However, we would want a digital access map to also be accessible. City of Sydney has an example of an interactive digital access map.
Making access maps accessible
Many people use Google Maps and similar apps to help them navigate the built environment. They focus on road networks and points of interest but lack information for pedestrians. Google has an option to list individual “accessible places” such as a park. But this is of little use to someone with vision impairment. So how to make access maps accessible?
There are two key accessibility issues. One is collecting and integrating access information into maps. The other is designing digital maps so they are accessible to users with diverse physical, sensory and cognitive abilities. There is a third issue. Some local governments have an access or mobility map, but these are often buried on a website somewhere. Many people don’t know they exist.
A conference paper has more detail about the challenges faced in designing and creating digital accessible access maps. The title is Grand Challenges in Accessible Maps published on the ACM website.
Resource list
Here is a list of links that cover basic and technical issues of map accessibility including non-digital maps. Thanks to Jo Szczepanska for sharing the list.
An article by The Paciello Group explains the issues clearly and has other useful links for non technical people.
The W3C website has a section on different types of accessible maps including tactile maps. Static maps and interactive maps are covered in Map Accessibility.
Accessible Maps on the Webis a magazine article from the US. It’s a bit more technical but illustrates some of the issues.
Another resource for digital applications is Gregg Vanderheiden’s Accessibility Masterlist. It covers everything you can think of. Each feature is coded for either blindness and low vision, language and learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and Deaf and hard of hearing. Some links take you to products, others to related research papers. Prepare to spend some time going over the lists and links.
Design is powerful. It connects us to the world around us and shapes our lives. Inclusive design shapes products and services in ways that are useable by everyone. It requires a shared understanding of population diversity. Whether it’s a building a webpage, a policy framework or a town park, it ensures we “leave no-one behind“. Inclusive design is more than a checklist.
A blog page from Automattic says, “Truly inclusive designs are never really finished, and becoming fluent in inclusive design takes more than a checklist. We all need a map when we start exploring any new world”. This is the introduction to a “guidance map” aimed at leading individuals and teams through the processes of creating inclusive thinking and practice.
Although focused on technology, some of the principles and processes can be applied in other design situations. For example, “Learn about your audiences; their motivations, needs, behaviors, challenges, pain points and goals”. The key headings in this article on Design.blog are:
Broadening perspectives and building empathy;
Bringing diversity into teams and processes; and
Building inclusion into designs.
The article explains each of the three steps in more detail. Some concepts such as colour contrast are well-known to designers. Less considered factors are providing cost-accessible options of designs, and designing for low bandwidth. Designs should be adaptable for longer life and empower clients to continue without more designer input. These ideas really show that client needs are at the centre of the design. Designing out “pain points” is essential for all users.
Design is a powerful tool and inclusive design has the “potential to unite heterogeneous cultures in shared understanding. To make products and experiences globally accessible.” Good design is inclusive design.
Icons are like abstract paintings – they need labels.
Digital designers are great at creating icon puzzles for users. They make a good guessing game until you learn what they represent. We see icons everywhere – on microwaves, washing machines, and of course, apps. Like abstract paintings, icons have different meanings for different people. We might like ambiguity in art, but not on our smart phones. That’s why icons need labels.
Icons are used as a way to save space, or where space for instruction is limited. But designers make a lot of assumptions about previous experience with instructions. Hampus Sethfors explains that saving space at the expense of usability is not the way to go.
In hisAxesslab article, Sethfors uses the example of trying to download a TED Talk on a smart phone for viewing later. He explains why icons are ruining interfaces and that icons need labels otherwise users give up and become unsatisfied with the app. Sethfors also uses Instagram, Gmail, and Apple apps as examples of what not to do. He goes on to look at icons on a washing machine dial, and then to icons that really work. You can really see the difference in the examples shown below.
Reducing cognitive load means reducing the mental effort required to do something. Making designs easy to use and understand is part of the solution. Whether it’s digital information or walking the street, we can all do with some help by reducing cognitive load so we can process the important messages.
Jon Yablonski developed seven design principles for reducing cognitive load in relation to user interfaces in the digital world. But these are useful tips for other fields of design. The seven principles make a lot of sense and are explained simply. The principles are:
Avoid unnecessary elements: less is more
Leverage common design patterns: keep things familiar
Eliminate unnecessary tasks: make it easy to stay focused
Minimize choices for easy decision making
Display choices as a group: to help with decisions
Strive for readability: make it legible
Use iconography with caution: they aren’t always intuitive
Yablonski’s website explains further the concept of cognitive load. Every time you visit a website or a new environment your brain has learn something new. You have to do two things at once – focus on learning how to get around and at the same time, remember why you are there. The mental effort required is called cognitive load. If you get more information than you can handle, the brain slows down. We can’t avoid cognitive load, but designers can help minimise it.
Academic Coaching for Post Secondary Students
Would academic coaching help post secondary students with disabilities achieve their education goals? That was the question for a pilot study. Not surprisingly, the coaching helped. Improved self esteem and confidence helped the students achieve degrees in STEM subjects. The key component of academic coaching for students was helping students with their executive functioning.
The title of the article is, Academic Coaching: Outcomes from a Pilot Group of Postsecondary STEM Students with Disabilities.
Abstract: Faced with poor retention and graduation rates for students with disabilities, postsecondary institutions have experimented with interventions to help students succeed in college. This practice brief describes a pilot initiative in which 41 students with disabilities pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees at three postsecondary institutions engaged in weekly academic coaching sessions primarily aimed at improving students’ executive functioning.
Data collected through an online survey of participants at the end of the initiative suggests that the academic coaching services increased their self-confidence, motivation, and determination to succeed. Participants reported that they gained skills in time management, studying, note taking, organization, prioritization, writing, self-advocacy, and stress management as a result of the academic coaching. Although literature regarding academic coaching and students with disabilities has often focused on students with LD or ADHD, results of the pilot initiative suggest that students with a variety of disabilities can benefit from coaching relationships.
A light-hearted tone is no cover for the serious nature of accessibility. Hampus Sethfors explains “the dad-thing comes with a ton of accessibility needs”. Carrying a baby means the loss of one or both arms and hands. He also found he had less brain processing capacity. As Hampus says, accessible design is parent friendly design, and he explains why.
Holding a baby is a classic example of situational disability as described in the Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit. However, smart phone voice control and access to a headset means he can listen to a podcast. Other parent disabilities are mostly related to having less brain processing capacity. Sleep deprivation and constantly thinking about keeping a baby alive are just two factors. Captions on Netflix means he can keep the sound down or off completely.
This blog post is written in a lighthearted way, but there are important messages that all designers should heed. The access lab bloghas easy to read content and is a great example of how to write more inclusively. Most of the articles are related to digital technology, but the principles are valid in other fields of design.
There’s nothing like asking potential users what they think of a new product. Even better if you involve them in the design process. But sometimes it’s not possible and designers resort to personas. This is often the case in digital technology. The Inclusive Design Toolkit has a suite of 12 personas representing a broad view of potential users. Each one has a story to tell about their lifestyle and their connection to technology.
Many factors affect digital exclusion: prior experience, competence, motivation and general attitude about technology. The personas highlight these factors to make it easier for designers to be inclusive. Each persona has a description of their lifestyle, competency with technology, and physical and sensory capabilities.
The online resource is part of the Inclusive Design Toolkit with the option to download a PDF. You can take a deeper dive into the personas as a family set. This takes personas one step further by introducing family interactions. The Inclusive Design Toolkit also has an exclusion calculatorthat estimates the number of people unable to use a product or service.
The Inclusive Design Toolkit is based on thorough research over more than ten years. The personas were produced as part of a project to improve the inclusivity of railway journeys.
The team wrote a conference paper about using personas for product development. They assessed the task of carrying a tray of food across a cafe, taking into account how using mobility aids restricts hand use. The title of the paper is, Evaluating inclusivity using quantitative personas. The full paper is available by request from ResearchGate.
Graphic design covers all kinds of creative design and visual communications. The accessibility of graphic design should always be considered in the production of websites, brochures or Word documents. Fortunately there is a great handbook for accessible graphic design to help.
Graphic design covers creative design, visual communications, applied design and technology sectors. The text covers typography, digital media, web accessibility, Office documents, accessible PDFs, print design, environmental graphic design, colour selection and more. It’s relatively easy to read and has a logical structure. At the end is a list of publications, links to websites and tools to help.
There are so many little things that graphic designers can do to make their creations more accessible. The guide shows how to make graphic creations accessible with little, if any, extra effort. The title of the guide is, AccessAbility 2: A Practical Handbook on Accessible Graphic Design,and comes from Ontario, Canada.
Beginning with some questions…
How do we plan a graphic design project to ensure it is as accessible as possible for the intended audience? What considerations do we need to make for accessibility across various media? And how does our desire to communicate effectively with people of varying abilities translate into specific design decisions?
This book is for a broad group of individuals, including professional graphic designers, clients, educators, students and many others.
Access to information during the COVID-19 pandemic became even more problematic for some users as everything went online. So what can UD, UDL and Accessibility do to help to combat ableism?
An articleby John L. O’Neill discusses Universal Design, Universal Design for Learning and Inclusive Design. In this context, the concept of Inclusive Design has a focus on the digital world. He covers the history of each, much of which will be known to UD followers. O’Neill argues that all three can be combined in innovative ways to ensure access to information. This is logical because each has the same goal – inclusion. He uses a case study where he merges the UD principle of perceptible information, the tenet of multiple means of representation from UDL, and adaptive systems from Inclusive Design. This perspective is given the title of “Abilities Design”.
O’Neill claims ableism underpins barriers and that undoing ableism is not a form of charity. Legislation that requires access and accessibility does little to change ableist attitudes.
The title of the articleis, Accessibility for All Abilities: How Universal Design, Universal Design for Learning, and Inclusive Design Combat Inaccessibility and Ableism.
Editor’s Note: I am not sure that inventing another design category based on inclusion takes us any further forward. However, it is an example of how designers new to inclusive concepts can use existing frameworks to help their design process.
From the Abstract
Discussions about accessibility surged at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as people became more dependent on accessing information from the web. This article will explore different disability models to understand the oppression of people with disabilities. It will examine how the different principles and methods of Universal Design, Universal Design for Learning, and Inclusive Design can be combined in innovative ways to ensure that all citizens have access to information without barriers.
The Web Accessibility Guidelines aren’t just for web designers and tech people. We all need to have an overall grasp of what they are about. As we do more online it is important we don’t make things inaccessible by mistake. Claire Benidig introduces the concepts of accessibility in UX design using the guide from Microsoft.
Cognition, Vision, Hearing, Mobility and Mental Health are all covered in an easy to read way. So, non-tech people can understand.
If we know about the basics of web accessibility, we can give a decent brief to a web designer. Then we will we can check if the Web Accessibility Guidelines were built in. Many designers still think of accessibility as an add-on feature.
Claire’s article is titled, Accessibility in UX Design. She says that accessibility is not confined to a group of users “with some different abilities”. Anyone can experience a permanent, temporary or situational disability. An example of situational disability is having just one arm free because you are holding a baby or the shopping.
Microsoft inclusive design principles state:
“Exclusion happens when we solve problems using our own biases. As Microsoft designers, we seek out those exclusions, and use them as opportunities to create new ideas and inclusive designs.”
UX and Mental Health
It’s safe to say that everyone has experienced a website or app that is difficult to use. But little is known on how difficult interactions with apps and websites affect people with mental health conditions. UX design, or user-centric design, is associated with digital and website design. However, UX is not quite the same as co-design with actual users.
Danae Botha says that “a confusing UX could trigger anxiety” and repetitive tasks can make depression worse. Repetitive alerts are not great for someone with an attention disorder either.
Design for mental health reduces or eliminates features that can aggravate symptoms of a disorder. For example, automating menial tasks may decrease the risk of boredom-induced depressive symptoms.
In her article, Botha offers some tips for organisations and companies to minimise communication barriers. She covers many of the different apps available such as Teams, Jira Slack, and Miro and explains their pros and cons.
What if you are a designer and you’re not sure how to engage with your user base? According to a UXDesign blog post, many designers are introverted and don’t know where to start with user interviews. A fear of talking to strangers brings up many thoughts:
I’m no researcher, what if I don’t ask the right questions? What if I say something to offend the person? How do I not contaminate the responses with my own views?
So some tips for stepping outside the comfort zone are helpful. The articlehas some practical advice such as, don’t jump straight into the questions without some light introductory chat. And fix the things you didn’t like about the interview process for the next time. The title of the article is An introvert’s guide to starting user interviews.
However, it might be the case that the personalities that go into ICT are not the people who are good at user interaction. This might be why higher education programs are not producing graduates who are skilled at this side of the design process. Indeed, according to an article from Norway, the institutions are not training people to even meet basic legal design requirements for accessibility.