#ID24 🚀 Highlights of Inclusive Design 24

Our three highlights of the 24-hour conference, focussed on accessibility and usability.

If you didn’t have a chance to watch the Inclusive Design 24 talks in real time, check the conference’s website and the YouTube videos of all talks. In this blog, we highlight our three top talks by Henri Helvetica, Sarah Pulis + Andrew Arch, and Sarah Lewthwaite.

Henri Helvetica 👉 How performance decisions make accessibility differences

In his talk, Henri covered the challenges of the ever-changing technology landscape and how this affects the development of accessible products around the world. He didn’t solely focus on accessibility from a disability point of view, but also on inclusive products for developing markets and the importance of designing for a global landscape. A few reminders shared by Henri:

• It’s in these developing markets that the user bases are growing the quickest.
• Out of all the people in the world that have disabilities, 80% live in the global south/emerging markets.
• 2G still encompasses 40% of the global network connections.
• Phones in emerging markets phones are cheap, have small screens, low memory, and data is scarce and expensive.

“We need to design for slow and/or intermittent networks and the complete lack of connectivity,” said Henri, and not just for disabilities.

Sarah Pulis + Andrew Arch 👉 Usability testing with people with disability

Sarah and Andrew focussed on a few main areas like who to include in usability testing and what are the potential barriers or areas of concerns when running sessions with users with disabilities.

“Beware what you don’t know about your users, beware of bias towards obvious/visible disability.”

1. Diversity in disability

• Many disabilities are a continum, so remember that “talking to one person with a disability is ONLY talking to one person with a disability” and doesn’t mean your product is now automatically accessible.
• There can be differences between congenital and acquired disability.
• There are differences resulting from age, technical proficiency, culture, attitudes, literacy, etc.
• There are different ways to use technology: including devices, platform, assistive technologies and adaptive strategies.

2. Number of people to include

• How many people should you include in your testing?

“The more you include, the more insight you will get, obviously, but at the end of the day you need to male sure you include enough people to allow you to understand the usability of your product.”

• Make sure you include diverse users in your user research to understand needs, preferences and opportunities.
• You will need to test with certain users with disabilities at different stages: during build, at acceptance testing, after major content or feature changes.

3. Location, location, location

• If you are going to invite the users to attend the sessions in your office/a viewing facility, make sure this location is easy to get to and close to public transport, is accessible, and that the room has adjustable features. lighting and table height.
• If you are running the research at their house, this will be easier for the participant, but ensure they are comfortable with it.

4. Observation and recording

• Don’t rely on traditional recording methods that may interfere with the way a person uses their technology and don’t show important aspects like keyboard navigation.
• Sarah and Andrew advise you to have a human take notes and observe in the room to record the interactions.

5. Incentives

• Compensate people for their time and make sure that, if you’re offering a gift card, this is easy to use and the platform is accessible.
• Include travel allowance and don’t forget to check if the users requires the presence of a carer (who should also be incentivised).

6. NDA and consent

• Share any documents beforehand so the participant has time to review (maybe with the help of a carer/family member) and make it easy to understand.
• Send them a document in an accessible format.

7. During the sessions

• Make sure the facilitators are familiar with inclusive language, disability etiquette, assistive tech and adaptive strategies.

8. Recruitment

• There are multiple sources you can go to in order to find the right participants, depending on how much time and budget you have: this includes specialist panels, your own customers (if you work in-house for an end client), DYI recruitment through social media, or third-party agency like People for Research — have you heard about our Accessibility Collective? It’s our fixed price accessibility panel based in London and Bristol.

For more tips, watch their talk.

Sarah Lewthwaite 👉 Teaching accessibility: 10 messages from research

Although Sarah’s talk wasn’t specifically about accessibility in design or usability, her 10 principles for teaching accessibility can easily be adapted to your conversations with stakeholders when trying to convey the importance of creating accessible products and researching/testing with disabled people. According to Sarah, “this is a talk for everyone who talks about accessibility.”

We’ve listed Sarah’s 10 principles below, but we are planning to “translate” them into a blog to help you better communicate the importance of accessibility and inclusivity, so keep an eye on our website and Twitter feed!

Principle 1

Effective pedagogy equips learners for life in its broadest sense.

Principle 2

Effective pedagogy engages with valued forms of knowledge.

Principle 3

Effective pedagogy recognises the importance of prior experience and learning (in other words, build on what people already know).

Principle 4

Effective pedagogy requires learning to be scaffolded. Teaching means providing support and structures to help learners move forward and evolve.

Principle 5

Effective pedagogy needs assessment to be congruent with learning.

Principle 6

Effective pedagogy promotes the active engagement of the learner, the idea being that learners will take charge of their learning and become hands-on. Anything that engages a learner and inspires them is included in this principle.

Principle 7

Effective pedagogy fosters both individual and social processes and outcomes. Learners should be encouraged to communicate with each other!

Principle 8

Effective pedagogy recognises the significance of informal learning (a good example are design critiques).

Principle 9

Effective pedagogy depends on the learning of all those who support the learning of others. How do we support each other in learning about accessibility?

Principle 10

Effective pedagogy demands consistent policy frameworks with support for learning as their primary focus.

Watch Sarah’s talk below for more information on these principles.

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