A11YCHI
I created a wireframe website for the only digital accessibility meetup conference in Chicago.
Roles:
UX Designer
Accessibility lead
Project manager
Prior to A11YCHI
In undergrad at the University of Iowa, I studied American Sign Language (ASL) and was in the Deaf Studies program. My expertise in Deaf culture, understanding of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and knowledge of current happenings in the disability community proved to be an asset for our team – I interpreted during our client meetings and during an interview. I was also able to fill in some gaps for our team’s cultural language and disability bias understanding.
Because of my background in ASL, I wanted to learn more about how digital accessibility and UX intersect. Every other day there are articles that talk about inclusive design, accessible design, and universal design. I found it’s hard to keep track of the most accurate representation of where the industry should be heading in terms of accessibility, so we created a dictionary of the terms I will use throughout the study.
Before starting any part of the project, my team talked through our understanding of disabilities, how we interacted with people with disabilities in the past, and our hesitancies or excitement. This acknowledgement of our privilege removed all assumptions about where we were at the beginning and we gained empathy for each other as we went through the process of learning more about inclusive design and accessibility.
Image 1: A picture of Mary signing with a group of Deaf people outside the Crystal palace in Hyde Park, London.
Introduction to A11YCHI
Image 2: The A11Y symbol in the shape of a chicago glag. The words “Chicago Digital Accessibilty” are along the top blue banner. The letters “A11Y” are in red, where the stars of the flag are. The words “& Inclusive Design Meetup” are along the bottom blue banner.
The only digital accessibility and inclusive design meetup in Chicago, the Chicago Digital Accessibility and Inclusive Design Meetup(A11YCHI) asked our group to create an informational website for their Fall 2018 A11Y Camp/Conference.
We met with our clients, 3 co-organizers, and gained perspective on their project output expectations. Through a problem statement creation exercise and discussion, our clients aligned with the understanding that the product should be accessible to as many people as possible and be an informational hub for the camp.
Our clients gave us the focus to design for primarily low vision and blind users, keeping other disabilities in mind. That said, our team was still new to the entire field, so we were ready to tackle the challenge head-on.
My team wrote out our assumptions about the project together after our first client meeting:
User interviews will be about understanding the problems they have with websites/digital interfaces.
Usability testing and interviews work with this population will be tricky.
Usability sucks for most websites because people aren’t thinking about visual accessibility when making websites.
Screen reader accessibility is a low priority for most websites and companies.
The different levels of visual impairment might affect results differently
Low vision people depend on screen readers to navigate sites
SME Interviews
These blind spots, for lack of a better term, needed to be validated or invalidated throughout the project. To start off on the right foot we spoke with a three subject mater experts (SMEs), those who were a digital accessibility analyst or specialized in inclusive design on their teams, as well as two people who had a disability to gain insight into the field. Our SMEs were:
Dennis Deacon and Nick Ng, co-organizers of A11YCHI
Melissa Manak, a Designation graduate who is Deaf
Michael Sui, a co-organizer of the Bay Area Accessible and Inclusive Design Meetup
“Something you just have to SEE what the problem is to understand.. Rather than just talk.. Some people you have to show them” - Dennis
This illustrated that some stakeholders need to be shown how important accessibility is through user testing videos or trying to complete tasks through accessibility features on their own.
“Accessibility is becoming much more mainstream.” - Melissa
This was good new to us; accessibility would be very important in our future work.
From our conversations, we found that accessibility wasn’t prioritized and that on average 10-20% of the global population is overlooked when websites are made. Screen reader technology and overall digital accessibility is mandated but not prioritized unless there is a filed lawsuit against a certain company with liable cause for exclusion.
User Interviews
Image 3: Mary and her teammates interviewing a SME about digital accessibility.
“If i know that website is not accessible, I leave and I won't visit that website again” - Interviewee #1
“The sky’s the limit is you figure out a way to get to the sky.” Interviewee #3
From our user interviews, we wanted to understand the lives our users were living, their thoughts on tech and digital accessibility, and the tools they used. We learned about how many blind people have to plan a very detailed day if they are going anywhere they don’t know. A Deaf person might need an interpreter for an event’s speakers. People with cognitive disabilities might need specific resources for different times of the day. We realized there was no specific persona we could make that would help us create a design. There were so many different ways to categorize our demographics, it was unhelpful and impractical to make a definitive persona to aid our design process. We decided to instead focus on the clear problem we found and how to solve for it through our designs.
Our problem statement:
Potential attendees of the A11YChi Camp need a considerate, inclusive website with readily viewable information that gives a sense of what the camp will be like so that they can feel welcomed, excited, and prepared to attend.
As shift for the team
A large hindrance in our first round of interviews was being unable to talk to a blind or low vision identifying person. This was a “record scratch” moment for us, we knew there was more to uncover about digital accessibility and the experiences of people in the blind community. We knew we needed to get in front of blind users to learn more.
Before we tested with blind users, we had the opportunity to sit down with one more SME, Ray Campbell, a digital accessibility analyst at United Airlines who is blind. He screens every change to the united.com website to ensure they are creating a complete, screen reader accessible-friendly website. He used his insights into the life of a blind person to shed light on how we could give ourselves a break when talking about people with disabilities. Prior to our conversation with him, we felt that we needed to be very careful and mindful with our language. It was exhausting and draining and talking with him was a big relief. We didn’t need to be so hard on ourselves when using language or ideas that seemed to be offensive or assuming.