Last Monday, I had a great time presenting “Accessibility: An Even Playing Field” at mkeUX, at 5th Ward Pub in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

mkeUX is a laid back, anyone-welcome group dedicated to promoting user experience. They host presentations in casual settings. It’s light on the formal and stuffy, and heavy on the open sharing of ideas and having fun. My good friends and colleagues Michael Seidel and Mike Kornacki are responsible for it, and it’s been a huge success.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun yakking accessibility. We talked about the different types of disabilities, the laws as they exist today in the United States, and some of best-known lawsuits pertaining to accessibility. I covered some of the types of assistive technologies out there.

The second part of the presentation was sharing examples of some accessibility culprits – but by no means all of them! That included the often-villainous CAPTCHA, and some disturbing and downright offensive examples of it.

I’ve never been overly impressed with slideshows put up on SlideShare. More often than not, it’s out-of-context slides that don’t tell you much.

That being said, I do want to share my presentation. So here it is — but I will add some notes about what each slide means, very soon! This is more a reference for those who attended the event.

Thanks to everyone who did attend, and for everyone who expressed interest. I hope to do this presentation or some form of it again very soon!

Tags: accessibility, assistive technologies, CAPTCHA, milwaukee, mkeux, user experience, ux

Amazingly, I’ve reached the milestone of two years of blogging.

It doesn’t seem long ago when accessibility first piqued my interest, and when I dove headlong into both learning as much as I could about it and blogging happily along the way.

Though I haven’t always posted as much as I’d have liked, it’s been a rewarding year here at theaccessibility.com. I’m definitely going with a mantra that it’s better to post when you have something interesting to say, than to just post for the sake of posting. Quality over quantity — which is also a mantra that I’ve ruthlessly adopted for following people on Twitter (again, a post for another day).

I’ve gotten to interview amazing people like Jennison Asuncion, Carol Voss of IndependenceFirst, and Steve Spohn of AbleGamers. I’ve continued to meet a lot of great people in the industry, particular through social media outlets like Twitter. I’ve provided accessibility consultation on a number of web site designs.

Far and away, the 2010 highlight is when I took the User Experience Lead position at Johnson Controls.

I could go on and on about all the things that I love about Johnson Controls — the culture, the people, the green initiatives, the location — but I’m going to sum it all up by saying taking the job is easily one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

Though there are many things I learned in my last job, the truth is that I was mostly just stuck at a dead-end. I was in middle management, toiling over other’s issues and concerns and filling out paperwork. I did the occasional web design, but as I’ve posted before, my heart just hasn’t been in strict web design for a long time now…and certainly not in coding. My calling has been user experience, and of course that spoke in its wheel called accessibility.

When your reasons for staying somewhere mostly revolve around comfort and security (which can be important, especially when economies stumble and fall), you run the risk of not giving it your best anymore. Though I didn’t see it for the longest time, I needed to expand my professional world. I needed a change.

Enter Johnson Controls.

It continues to amaze me how much trust the place has in those of us on the User Experience team. While the company doesn’t have this grand vision of the exact details of user experience, they genuinely see its importance. They know that to be world leaders in anything, you have to truly understand the wants and needs of the people using your products. It can’t be “designed by developers for developers” or “designed by engineers for engineers”.

Here’s the icing on the cake — just last week, we had a great meeting with developers who are looking to the UX team to help clearly define the proper markup (HTML, CSS, etc) we ought to adhere to on the massive project we’re all undertaking. As part of that, I’m supplying accessibility guidelines.

Yup, we’re building a huge application from the ground up, and there’s an actual opportunity to make sure accessibility is factored from the onset.

I had just about resigned myself to accessibility being a side project, a labor of love that wouldn’t make any meaningful headway into my fulltime job…but now I’m very optimistic that that’s no longer the case.

Yeah, this turned more into gushing over my career change than this blog, but oh well.

Here’s to Year Three of theaccessibility.com!

Tags: accessibility, markup, user experience, ux, Video Games

I’m thrilled to say that I will be doing an accessibility presentation at mkeUX on December 6th, at the 5th Ward Pub in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Of course, I’ll share my presentation on this blog in the near future, but I’m calling it “Accessibility: An Even Playing Field.” I thought back to January when Glenda Watson Hyatt asked the accessibility world to answer this question in exactly 25 words — What Does Accessibility Mean to You?

As I answered then:
Accessibility is all about lack of restrictions. It is about opening pathways to all people regardless of any limitations. It is an even playing field.

I’ll talk about: what accessibility means to me; what types of disabilities and assistive technologies are out there in any web, application, or game audience; some successes and failures (lawsuits included!); some easy things to avoid…and more.

If you’re free, come on down for it!

Tags: accessibility, milwaukee, mkeux, user experience

It’s been far too long since I last posted! Shameful, I know. I wish I had a great excuse, but I don’t. Blogging is a firm commitment, and sometimes it’s easy to falter.

I wanted to take a moment tonight to call attention to a great accessibility blog’s milestone. Web Axe is celebrating its five year anniversary.

If you haven’t had the opportunity, check out what they’ve got going on. It’s really an excellent resource by Dennis Lembree and Ross Johnson.

I’m honored that they asked me to supply an audio contribution to their Podcast #84, Web Axe 5-Year Anniversary. While it reminded me that I’d need plenty of practice were I to ever entertain doing my own podcast, it was a fun experience expressing thoughts about Web Axe and accessibility as a whole. It’s also really cool to include myself among the ranks of noted accessibility voices like Bruce Lawson of Opera, Jennison Asuncion (whom I interviewed on this blog earlier this year), Tom Babinszki of Even Ground, and others.

As I mention in my piece, when I first jumped into the subject of web accessibility, Web Axe was one of the first blogs that I came across. Whether you’re an expert on the subject (if such a thing is possible) or just getting started, do make a point of reading their posts and listening to their podcasts.

You’ll find that the posts and podcasts have a down-to-earth, plainspoken style in delivering news, tips, tricks and all sorts of accessibility knowledge.

Keep doing an awesome job, guys! You’re an inspiration to all of us striving to make a difference in the field.

Tags: accessibility, webaxe

Pushing for more accessible user experiences can be an uphill battle depending on the business holders with whom you’re dealing. While some may flat out not care, more often they are reluctant to take the additional time, effort and cost to bake accessibility into an overall project.

Whether armed with lots of money and time or not, you have your voice — never be afraid to speak up when there are opportunities to make an experience more accessible. It can be on the micro level (“that font against that background is going to be really difficult for people with sight limitations to make out”). It can be on the macro level (“all those videos on the site? we really need to add captioning”).

You may lose. You may get a pat on the head and told to go play somewhere else. Keep trying!

Some approaches may work better than others. Stressing the moral and social obligations of creating accessible experiences is a valid, noble route — but businesses won’t always respond to that, even if their intentions are good. Spending money is spending money…and sometimes accessibility can be costly, such as the prospect of retrofitting a completed web site.

There are some great references like Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization to help.

I’ve been super jazzed about accessibility for the past couple years, but I know how easy it can be to feel you’re fighting a losing battle. There were times in my past job that I lost the energy when up against an overwhelming ambivalence towards accessibility (or even web standards in general). But then were were times like when I was able to enact color contrast improvements to an internal booking interface, to make it easier for someone with severe color blindness to better do her job.

Sometimes you have to pick your battles and alter your strategies, but don’t give up and let the fires of inaccessibility spread. Even small changes start to add up.

Tags: accessibility, ux, web standards