Tag: ICT

The role of accessibility in the usability profession today – and tomorrow

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.

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HCI 2009: an on-the-train-home review

HCI 2009, the 23rd annual British Computer Society conference on Human Computer Interaction, took place this week at Cambridge University’s Churchill College . It started and finished with two provocative and inspiring keynote talks, and in between were some interesting presentations and discussions. I was there to give a paper on the user research work we’ve been doing as part of the Usable Image project, but I was also wearing my accessibility hat, and while there wasn’t a huge amount of coverage of accessibility or inclusive design there were plenty of other presentations that were definitely of relevance.

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Design for life part 1

One of the great things about my job as a researcher with a focus on accessibility and usability is that I can happily justify going all reflective on an everyday event, wondering why it happened, and what could be done to change it in the future – especially if it involves some user interface design quirk or flaw. Recounting this can provide valuable insight and encouragement to improving the quality of interface design – just Ask Tog!

Continue reading Design for life part 1