Designing for Accessibility
When designing digital services it can be difficult to understand the accessibility challenges that effect people. The purpose of this workshop is to look at what is meant by accessibility, and to use the concept of permenant, temporary, and situational challenges as a method to increase participants awareness of accessibility issues. The workshop then leads on to look more specifically at challenges that effect people for a given technology platform and finishes with participants developing an understanding of the current problem areas that exist when developing accessible products.
The purpose of this workshop is to highlight the different accessibility challenges that exist when creating digital services. Digital services are varied, and include web applications; mobile apps; desktop software packages; video games; and more. The workshop is split into three different activities and features a mixture of tasks based on individual, team (3-4 people), and group (2-3 team) activities.
Designing for Accessibility
Workshop Material
Activity 1 Worksheet Activity 2 Worksheet Activity 3 Worksheet Workshop SlidesAvailability
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Workshop Description
The workshop begins with a brief introduction to a practical model of different accessibility challenge areas. These focus on visual, cognitive, physical, communication, emotional and intersectional considerations.
Activity 1
The first activity in the workshop allows participants to broaden their current understanding of what constitutes an accessibility challenge. This is done through evaluating accessibility issues in terms of those that are permanent, those that are temporary, and those that are situational.
Activity 2
The second activity is designed to encourage participants to explore their current awareness of accessibility issues and what methods can be employed to solve them. These methods might include education, policy changes, or the development of technical tools.
Activity 3
In the third activity, individual teams are asked to pick one of the six accessibility challenge areas they have identified to analyse more deeply. At this stage teams begin by evaluating their previous matrixes and are then asked to pick three activities related to an individual research challenge area.
Workshop Development
Each workshop that we create goes through several stages of development to make sure that it is covering the aspects that we intended it to.
| Development Stage | Notes |
|---|---|
| Idea Generation | Idea generation for this workshop took place in summer 2016 between Crabb and Heron |
| Workshop Layout | Layout for this workshop was completed in late summer 2016 |
| Resource Creation | Resource creation for this workshop was completed in winter 2016 |
| Pilot Testing | Pilot testing for this workshop was carried out in the first three months of 2017 |
| Workshop Roll Out | The workshop was rolled out as part of the SICSA short theme into Games Accessibility throughout 2017 and into early 2018 |
| Data Analysis | Data analysis for this work was completed in 2018, supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland |
| Paper Generation | Paper generation for this work is currently under review. |
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