Inclusive Design Unconference Session

Feel free to continue the conversation with us...

Participants: Brian Kelly: b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk, ukwebfocus.wordpress.com: Frank Kresin: frank@waag.org, Jan Carmichael: carmichael.jan@gmail.com, Vivian Ducat, Maria van Zeller: mvanzeller@sistemasfuturo.pt, Jes Koepfler: koepfler@ilinet.org

Acronyms that were flying around:

WAI - web accessibiltiy initiative
WCA - web content accesibiilty guidelines
DDA - Disability Discrimination Act
UAAG - user agents accessbility guidelines (browsers)
ATAC - authoring tools accessbility guidelines
UMIC (Portugal guidelines)
W3C - web standards, set up the WAI, help create legislation, guidelines not working

Current business models don't support inclusivity

Challenges: Flash, fancy fonts, captioning

"accessibility is a question of mind", If you think in tems of "these people" and "those people" then you build barriers --> "you shouldn't have to build a ramp at the end to make something accessible" it should be an integrated design consideration

Usability connects with accessibility and it applies to everyone

Accessibility doesn't have to apply only to people lacking abilities - it includes everyone and understanding how we think and learn across the lifespan

Client versus designer versus artist debate

Are the international standards different and how are they different? 

Rather than attempting to standardize, approaches should reflect REALITY

Defining dis/ability - the definitions of disability change: is deafness a disability or a culture?
There's deaf and Deaf - some studies show that individuals born deaf and married deaf want to have children who are also born deaf versus someone who had hearing and then lost it

Accessibility is currently thought of as an acceptable set of criteria on a checklist (Brian doesn't agree) - how about user-centered design instead of universal design

How would we make the opening plenary accessible and where is the business model to support it? We'd need captions, someone to translate the metaphors and humor, make live the images in some way

Being able to get on a website versus being able to get a concept or content in the space... where do we draw the lines?

The all or nothing approach sucks (group consensus)

Move away from web accessibilty to web adaptability (Brian) - personalization of content regardless of your "abilities"

What is "reasonable"?  Is it reasonable to expect someone (i.e. jtrant and dbear) to spend $500 to caption anything that goes online from the opening plenary? Are we willing to pay higher conference registration fees to have the content become "more accessible" or is there a more realistic ground for which we set these guidelines and efforts - to not say "all or nothing" but to say, hey, look we're using a mashed up approach for each MWer to personalize this experience - so maybe you're not a Twitter person - that's ok, you don't have to be, but maybe you're not into powerpoint anymore either

Accessibility is not just about the individual, but also about how a person needs to engage and achieve your outcomes/goals

Who decides what is reasonable? (Frank) - Engage the users in the process (Jan)

GET THOSE USERS INVOLVED IN THE DESIGN PROCESS - the level at which you can do that is defined in many ways by your business model - can you involve one person from every "ability" ? And to what extent? There still needs to be sign off and the project needs to move forward. There's also a potential for tokenism at some levels by those reimplementing the checklist in a new way (i.e. Ok, I've got someone on the team who is deaf, someone who is blind, someone who is in a wheelchair and they singularly represent all people who work within that ability...) This is obviously problematic in the same way that it is problematic for trying to achieve "multiculturalism" on a design team by including one minority representative.

Getting back to otucomes - a real world alternative for a digital experience can support the same OUTCOMES - this might be ok

Vivian - Should we be identifying what the level of accessibility is on the web? We identify what is and is not accessible in a physical space, but what would that look like online? Would it come across as offensive, almost like a "whites only" type of thing??

Maria - Image has to have alternative text that explains the context of the image
Frank - however good you describe a picture you will never see it, how accessible will this be?
Is the description of the painting intrinsic to the painting, only to be described by a professional, or is it in us? What about a feminist perspective or the many other filters the painting might be interpreted through?

Maria - so do we just avoid authoritative text?

Brian - what is the purpose of the text? the contextual relevance of the metadata - maybe the descriptions/metadata need to be synthesized at the entry point - avoiding monolithic solutions

Flexible design - at the user level being able to change the background, increase the font size

Flash has developed and guidelines now have to be POUR: perceivable, opporable, understandable, and robust

The robust nature of Flash is more robust because of its closedness

Frank - is there a content esperanto?

Brian - If we're providing our content in so many open formats that are widely used we can allow the users to do the repurposing and not have to develop a monolithic structure

Vivian - lack of awareness publicly, no pressure (politically and otherwise) on certain things to create more usabilit-centeredness

Moving towards multiple personal views of content - as much online as on site

Imagine a plenary session where I could change the setting to appeal to my learning styles and preference irrespective of my abilities. So someone in the back of the room could move the slide text to the top or the bottom (based on preferred learning style of wanting to see pictures and hear words or read words and ignore the pictures) 

Is the institution responsible or is the individual learner responsible? And where do the two meet?

Frank - Do we have a sense of the numbers of people who are currently not being served?

Article in A List of Parts by Lisa Herrod

Solutions for sign language - some people considering avatars for sign langague?

We know about websites for the visually impaired and forget the rest 

Judith Second Life - Youtube video - woman with cerebal palsey - in real life she's in a wheelchair in secondlife she has no limit: http://www.usability.com.au/resources/wheeling-vid.cfm

Vivian - Design Project Idea - a website with a few from each ability group to have a space for those who don't have access to these audiences - gain their perspective on their preferred design methods - get a range of viewpoints from each ability group 

Accessbility supports Sustainability

Brian - The legistlation is one-dimensional and doesn't support the complexities, tensions between enhancing access to a community versus ensuring that those resources apply to accessbility guidelines - because we can't comply with the guidelines do we not do anything at all (risk averse), or do we just do it and keep quiet about the facts, or go bold to come up with new solutions (risk). We need to live in a real world - what does it mean to be accessible in our real world (not let's do the cool stuff and hope no one sues us because it's a museum)

Frank - pushing for designers to be more aware of the issue

Maria - their solutions in her graduate program were to just create another version of the site in html, very frustrating, stamp of approval from government "we pretend to be accessible" - designing for web is different than designing for print - no option for accessibility in print design - a hard shift for a lot of designers to make

Brian - we also don't have the evidence - UK study automated testing for a 1,000 websites, one website that people with disabiliteies said was really good, an online bank (EGG), the html didn't comply with the accessibility guidelines but the users loved it - the advocacy is promoting guideliens that are flawed and don't support the evidence