Inclusion By Design

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Inclusion By Design

Type: Breakout

Track: Design

This session explains the processes and artifacts required to integrate Accessibility into the Practice of Design. I will explain the difference between accessible design and inclusive design, and give practical guidance for integrating accessibility into Design Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design and Content Design.

 

[missed start for coctail class]

 

graphs.  And descriptive it text for images.  If the text is meant to be read, don't put it in the image.  Ensure sematicly meaningful page structure by using paragraphs appropriately.  Which brings me to visual design.  Visual design plays a significant role in communicating a brands proper position and personality.  Remember the address from five or six years ago?  You know, the one.  Was it blue and black or was it white and gold?  It caused quite the uproar on social media.  This little color illusion reminded us all that color is almost never seen as it really is.  We all see colors slightly differently.  And our perception is literally comelied by the context in which we view it.  Such as the devices screen and the surrounding environment.  You might have a shadow or something off of your wall or window.  Visual designers, don't use color alone to convey meaning.  Always test your designs with a color contrast analyzer tool.

The simplest place to start is to design in greyscale.  As this forces you to consider layout, typography, and visual balance before tackling the subjective of color.  The design should be clear and easy to read with a thought through text hierarchy.  By going in greykale it forces you to not use color alone to convey the meaning.  As you add color to your design, remember that color is an -- exact and relative art form.  Being an exact, we need to select colors that will perform well within a range of environments.  This should not be under estimated as roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women worldwide are living with some sort of color blindness.  Your choice of colors will depend on the look and feel of your brands visual identity.  This is time for experimentation.  You'll want to use a color contrast analyzer tool to help you get at the look and feel that you want.  Ultimately visual design is about creating delight for all of your users.  And my friend, Rich Donovan said it best.  Customer and employee delight is the goal.  All day.  Every day.  Understanding and delivering actions that delight define whether or not revenue is maximized.  Diverse demand has changed how great brands deliver delight.  Are you ready to unleash different?  I don't know about you.  But I'm more than ready to unleash different.  We have a very real opportunity right now to build back better.  And I'm hopeful that will.  Not too long ago I asked a form every colleague what he thought the role of visual designers were in non-visual interfaces.  He couldn't really give me a good answer.  My answer was there.  As the role of visual -- it is the role of visual design to create delight.  Visual designers have a very important role to play for non-visual interfaces.  Because it is their job to understand what a desirable, pleasurable, and delightful experience really feels like.  It is really easy to say an icon or the image is just decorative.  It is much harder to take a step back and ask yourself why did I choose that particular icon or image.  Is there something I want my users to get from it.  I hope you keep this in mind the next time you and your team are deciding what the alt text should be on the image or icon.

I know I've covered a lot today.  I hope some of this helps you in your journey of making this world a better and more inclusive place for everyone.  Thank you.

>> Thanks, Alicia.  That was fantastic.  We have a number of questions coming from the audience right now.  I'm going to start firing them off.

>> All right.

>> One of the questions are where can we see more of how to best annotate with accessibility?

>> So a resource that I found and I particularly line is accessibility blue lines.  It was shown in my slide.  I think what you have to find of realize about annotating for accessibility is that the way that you annotate is going to depend on the needs of your team.  Because like I said, you don't want to annotate everything.  You don't want to annotate things that you don't have to either.  So it really is a thing to have a conversation with your team with.

>> Awesome.  From Mark he has a question.  Do you have a favorite source for inclusive language?

>> That's a really good one.  There's some inclusive language guides out there.  I don't have a favorite.  Please share your favorites with me on social media.  Because I mean there are some out there.  I don't think -- I think that's where we can improve as an industry.

>> So we have a question that says you to not use gender and race in descriptive text.  Why would we only allow those details to those who are sight-enaged.  Why wouldn't we provide those details to sight-enabled.

>> I didn't say for non-sighted or sight-enabled.  It is in general you shouldn't use those descriptors unless it is relevant to the story.  Because you really don't know someone's preferences and the way they choose to identify themselves.  So if you -- if it is not needed for the story, leave those out.

>> Got it.  Thank you.

And what are the different strategies that you recommend for inclusive design?

>> So I think basically have a curious mindset is the number one strategy is always ask why.  Ask the five whys.  And really take a learning -- a learners mentality to design.  You know, we're all learning to be better designers.  I would say that's the best strategy for inclusion.

>> And that one -- there's another question that kind of relates to this.  How do we go about the research that you were referring to?

>> Okay.  So when you are doing your research activities it is really -- you really have to just get out there.  You have  to, you know, meet different people and use social media and networking to your advantage.  And access different people that you might not have talked to before.  There are certain services out there like fable tech that can help you recruit participants for your research for sure.  But really it is about just expanding your network and inviting different people into your research practice.

>> I have a question from another participant.  I work in the design agency.  We work with many different clients.  A common issue -- this just jumped -- a common issue I run into when running accessibility training is convincing clients to use inclusive language.  Do you have any tips for getting buy-in?

>> My main thing for getting buy-in is meeting them at Starbucks or the coffee shop and having a regular conversation with them.  I think bringing a positive personality to the conversation is key.  It is not just about always convincing people.  But it is just about meeting them where they are at and seeing if we can find some common ground.  Then intuitively moving from there.

>> That makes sense.  So I have a question for Vanessa.  I'm so confuse about whether or not to use the word click.  I've heard to use select.  I've also been told never use select unless it is for a list or something like that.  There doesn't seem to be on agreement on the button action word.  Click is universal and not ableist language.  What are your thoughts about that.

>> I actually prefer select.  Not everyone clicks.  When you use select it helps your QA folks write their test cases in a way they can run the same test case for over a multiple devices.  Select is a more inclusive tomorrow, because you can select on a mobile phone.  You can -- that could probably touch or could probably a keyboard or describe a switch control or another assistive device.  So it is not really specific.  So that way you can use whatever you are doing, your annotations and things for over multiple devices.

>> That makes sense.  So I have another participants note.  Awesome presentation.  How has computer access changed for you overtime.  Do you require non-mainstream tools to do all of the work that you like to do these days?

>> As a really good question.  The answer is no.  I don't require anything that's not non-mainstream anymore.  But when I was younger, I actually tried dragon naturally speaking back in the early 90's when you literally had to train your dragon and a silent room.  You can imagine how horrible the experience was as a child going through that.  Now we have voice technology in our homes; right?  With Siri and Alexa.  It has become mainstream.  It is not an assistive technology anymore to use your voice.

>> Can you give some examples on what are the dos and don'ts for inclusivety words?

>> Sure.  When in doubt always use person-first language.  I say that because you don't know how someone identifies.  For example, I don't really identify as a disabled woman.  I do identify as a woman with a disability.  So when in doubt always use person-first language.  And also when you are describing someone's disability, it is important to realize that assistive technology and wheelchairs are not things that are negative; right?  So you wouldn't say someone that was bound or confined to a wheelchair.  Because a wheelchair can actually be quite liberating.  Just be cognizant of how you are describing people and that it is always in a positive light.

>> Great.  Lastly, we have a question about what other resources do you recommend to learn more about the topic?

>> That's a great question.  So I mean there's a lot of resources out there.  The UX research collective has just done a conference that there was a lot of great speak percent.  I read a lot of books.  Seek those books out.  I mentioned a few in my talk.  Mismatch by Kat Holmes and also Rich Donovan's book "Unleash different."

Really I mean talk to different people.  Get a lot of different resources.  Expand your books and resources that you get today.

>> Thank you.  Any final comments to the team that we have here?

>> Just thank you.  I hope your evening is absolutely wonderful.  I hope you enjoyed my talk.  You can follow me on Twitter at Ali.Alicia or connect with me on LinkedIn.

>> Thank you so much for the great session.  And thank you to everyone who joined us.  Hope you enjoy the rest of Axe Con.