People who get accessibility right
When talking about experience and usability, accessibility is an absolute essential, but unfortunately this doesn’t mean that the digital environment is always inclusive.
After our latest round of research on the impact of COVID-19, one of the highlights is that 41.7% of people with an impairment feel like online newspapers aren’t tailoring content to their needs during the pandemic, where 35.4% of disabled people feel like the government’s communications are not tailored to their needs.
This is not exactly news. If you browse social media, you can see why people feel these communications are not tailored to them. This is one example during the lockdown:
This information highlights the need for connection between important, life-changing news and people that need to understand it. Here are some examples from Hector Minto and Molly Watt.
Accessibility should never be overlooked: it is essential to any project where you need to communicate critical information in a succinct and clear manner, and is especially essential during a global pandemic.
If you are in the UX and design field, it helps to follow the experts and keep up to date with the latest accessibility developments. Here are the accessibility advocates that we listen to for expertise.
Léonie Watson
Léonie Watson is the co-founder of TetraLogical, a company that works with digital inclusion within existing technology, as well as an accessibility engineer and a member of the W3C Advisory Board based in Bristol.
Geri Coady
Geri Coady is the author of Color Accessibility Workflow, a book that ensures accessibility and aesthetics go hand-in-hand with every design. She is also a freelance illustrator and designer with a love of Japanese culture, language and education.
Molly Watt
Molly is an accessibility and a UX consultant — currently at Sigma — with an active Twitter account, educational blog and YouTube channel. Not only is Molly one of the most influential people in the accessibility and UX field, but she is also the founder of the Molly Watt Trust and a well-known keynote speaker.
Neil Milliken
Neil Milliken leads accessibility at Atos and also co-founded the AXSChat on Twitter, a community built around the exchange of knowledge on social media with a focus on accessibility and inclusion.
Jon Gibbins
Jon Gibbins is a curator of a11y and co-host of the Bristol Inclusive Design & Development meetup. He is an accessibility consultant making websites and mobile apps accessible to everyone.
Daniel Gilbert
The Kentuckian accessibility viking is a Twitter gem. Dan is a contributor to Can I Play That?, an online publication that looks at accessibility and inclusion in gaming.
Benjy Stanton
Benjy Stanton is an interaction designer at Swirrl. Benjy has written blogs on accessibility in design around charts, accessible search forms and an accessibility checklist.
Amanda LJ
Amanda is a disability inclusion consultant based in Melbourne and runs a consultancy called Accessible Action that develops strategies, policies and processes to include people with disability from a customer, community and employee perspective.
Cordelia McGee-Tubb
Cordelia is the principal accessibility engineer at Salesforce, a comic illustrator and a massive techie. She regularly speaks about digital accessibility, writes articles on blogs and co-hosts the podcast 13 Letters, a series of interviews with the world’s leading accessibility minds.
Steve Faulkner
Steve Faulkner works with The Paciello Group and is an expert in the accessibility field. He is also an active tweeter and regularly shares best practices and updates from the accessibility world.
Heydon Pickering
Heydon is the author of Inclusive Design Patterns: Coding Accessibility Into Web Design and Apps for All: Coding Accessibility Into Web Design. Hayden also teaches CSS online and shares accessibility wisdom on his blog.
Jamie Knight
Jamie helps designers and developers understand what they need to do to make sure we include everyone when creating new products and services. Jamie is a senior research engineer at the BBC and he’s proud autism is his superpower. You can find out more about him by reading this BBC article or his blog where he shares how it is like to live “autistically happy”.
Do you have any other suggestions? We can only touch on a few people in this article, but there are many more accessibility experts, companies, groups and meetups highlighted by the A11y Project in this article.
Who do you listen to for accessibility advice, insights and essentials?
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