I had the honour of taking part in a panel session discussing How Does Accessibility Fit into Today’s Usability Practice? at the Usability Professionals’ Association Conference (UPA 2010) in Munich last week. The session was organised by Shawn Henry of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative and provided an opportunity to debate the challenges of promoting and supporting accessible ICT design within a wider usability context. A number of interesting discussion points emerged – here are my reflections on the panel session.

(more…)

The discussion over what should be the best tag to use for technology and accessibility related content on social media sites like Twitter and Delicious continues apace, with a number of different suggestions – with the merits of the abbreviation ‘a11y’ at the centre of most debate. Alternatives such as ‘access’ and ‘axs’ have been proposed.

Here are my thoughts.

(more…)

Often, when working to promote accessibility of the digital environment, we look to the physical environment for comparisons and analogies. A PhD study at the School of Architecture here in Dundee has made me realise just how many parallels there are in the challenge of raising the profile of accessibility both amongst architects and amongst web and software developers.

(more…)

Next Page »