Initially I was worried that over time I’d lose touch with the language, culture and connection I had as I moved to an online environment. So it’s very cool to find myself in a place where I’ve been able to connect such diverse professions into something deeper than either could have been on their own.

Good things come to those who wait

Fingers crossed, I’ll be presenting a panel at South by South West next March with two friends I greatly respect and have the huge honour of working with through WaSP’s International Liaison Group: Henny Swan and Glenda Simms.

The panel is called Aging, Cognition & Deafness: The Quirky Corners of Web Accessibility, and this is what we want to say:

Bored with accessibility? Over AJAX, ARIA and yet another Jaws demo for dummies? Struggling to find a challenge in checklists? Join us in discussing the quirky corners of web accessibility where we’ll look at technical approaches to aging, deafness, cognitive disabilities and more.

During the panel we hope to cover questions such as:

• How does deafness impact on access to online information?
• Are subtitles enough to provide accessible content to the deaf?
• What techniques can I apply to make my site more accessible to the deaf?
• What sort of research has been done around people with multiple disabilities?
• Which WCAG criteria do I need to be aware of?
• Are there different considerations in user testing sites with deaf/aged/cognition users?
• Why are clinical cognitive disabilities less important than functional cognitive disabilities in web design?
• What design techniques can improve the usability of online forms for older users?
• Can rich media projects like SecondLife be accessible?
• How could I increase the readability of a web page for a person with dyslexia?

If you think it sounds interesting, give us your vote… Even if you can’t make it over to Austin next year, hopefully it’ll ensure I do ;)

The premiere of this film was at last January’s London Deaf Film Festival. The film went on to win a Clin d’Oeil European Video Award in Paris, and last weekend won best foreign film voted by the audience at the Viittomakielinen filmifestivaali, a deaf film festival in Finland.- Via Grumpy Old Deafies

I’d love to know what you think of it…

(Length of film: 6 minutes)

Yes there are some helpful tools available, but many times it’s a matter of looking at the code, the interface or the content and evaluating a site manually. Sometimes things are so painfully obvious, it takes half a nanosecond to see that there’s a problem and wow, it’s so big it’s a joke.

Given that it’s 2008, most of these sites are around ten years old. But every now and then there’s a new kid on the block and, well… don’t you just wish someone had told them boy bands died out in the 90’s…?

Three months ago I was sent a link to the relaunched UTS Interactive Multimedia course site. I’ll give you the link in a second, but before I do, let me issue this warning: If you suffer from seizures, don’t go there sister.

The Home page has been designed with an “interesting” Flash animation that strobes colour at a rate I’m guessing is much faster than 3 blinks per second.

It absolutely astounds me that a design like that has made it into a redesign in 2008. Worse still, I emailed the department as soon as I saw it and advised them that the flashing seemed quite a high rate and pointed them to the appropriate WCAG checkpoint 7.1, a Priority 1 issue. Even in WCAG 2 this is a Level 1 failure (success criteria 2.3.1).

Unfortunately nothing has been done in the last three months. Can a Flash animation be that important that it is retained, despite the fact that it has the potential to induce seizures in site users? And what message is this sending students of The Interactive Multimedia course?

The Trouble with Tools

I’ve yet to find a web tool that is able to measure the flicker rate of a .swf file. This is a problem. In conducting accessibility reviews, it’s usually obvious when a flicker rate is unsafe, but it’s always better if you can provide evidence. With Gifs it’s easy as there are a number of good tools around that can conduct a flicker test. But with Flash files, you need the .fla file to check frame rates. So in a situation like the one I’ve just described, without the source file, it’s pretty difficult to get an accurate measure.

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words…

I’m probably not doing myself any favours in writing this post. I’m three subjects off completing my Masters of Interactive Multimedia at UTS, so criticising the department’s new website isn’t the smartest thing I’ve done this week. But it’s clearly not the smartest thing they’ve done this year either.

I’m completely astounded that it made it into the design in the first place. I know the people involved in the redesign and it amazes me that they either don’t know or don’t care. Including a design feature like that says so much about the departments knowledge or position on website accessibility.

But as they say, a picture tells a thousand words, so how many words is a flickering Flash animation worth?

Related Links

UTS Graduate Courses in Interactive Multimedia

An introduction to the W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices

Run by the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative, the course runs for four weeks from May 26 to June 30 and provides lectures and hands on exercises for anyone wanting to learn more about designing and developing mobile friendly, accessible web content.

More information can be found on the course overview page, including a course outline, instructor details and other important stuff.

If you think you might be interested, check out the free sample course or go straight in and register.

Places are limited to the first 100 people, so if this is your area, don’t leave it too long to register.

I’ll be there, will you?

Related Posts

The Open Letter Initiative and the Mobile Web

Update

All places in the course have been filled, they went quickly, and I’m really happy to see 15 Australians on the list. So it will be interesting to see if we’re able to build a bit more momentum around building for an accessible mobile web. I hope so!

The Text Accessibility Plan (TAP) was designed with input from the community and provides more affordable access to communication services that the deaf and hearing impaired are likely to want.

For $40 USD, iPhone TAP customers will recieve:

• Unlimited SMS messages
• Unlimited data usage (email and web)
• $.40 per minute pay-per-use voice
• Visual VoiceMail

As AT&T are the exclusive providers of iPhone data services in The US, it’ll be interesting to see what Telstra Optus (thanks Jim!) and any of the other potential providers come up with when the iPhone is released in Australia this June.

Overall, it looks like a pretty reasonable deal, but I’m left wondering whether or not Apple will come out with an expensive hands free device / iPhone stand so that the Deaf can actually sign into it when video calls become available. We’ll have to wait and see…

The Apple site also provides some information on current iPhone accessibility features as well as a (pdf) Voluntary Product Accessibility Information document with more detailed accessibility information, including iPhone TTY access.

UPDATE
In order to qualify for the AT&T plan, the customer must submit an (pdf) application form which must be certified. The form states:

Certification of disability is required to process iPhone TAP applications. Applications received without certification will not be considered for enrollment in the iPhone TAP rate plan.
Certification of Disability Instructions:

A certifying agent must be a qualified health care professional, audiologist or hearing health professional, speech or language therapist/specialist, representative of an institution, agency or non-profit 510c3 organization actively engaged in work in the disability area specified by the applicant. A certifying agent must have direct knowledge or documentation of the applicant’s condition or functional limitation. Examples of certifying agents include licensed physicians and/or surgeons operating in the scope of their licenses, Vocational Rehabilitation Agency Counselors, Teachers, Audiologists, credentialed Therapists, Directors of independent living centers, or local, state, or national chapter presidents of associations of/for persons with disabilities including but not limited to: The National Association of the Deaf, Hearing Loss Association of America, AG Bell, Association of Late-Deafened Adults or Telecommunication for the Deaf, INC.

In a strange twist of fate, I’ve been invited to present at the Web Directions Gov08 Conference on May 22nd, which isn’t an IA Cocktail Hour event, but I’m sure there’s going to be some of the same crowd there. And surprise surprise! There’ll be lots of Fun, Alcohol, Learning and Canberra there too.

I’ll be presenting something on Accessibility and the User Experience, a talk based on the one I gave at Web Directions South 07… but better and more interesting, funnier and well, if Cameron Adams is in the room, there might even be a re-run of last years hilarity where he fell asleep during my presentation! Only this time *I will* have a camera ready.

Web Directions Government is a full day two track conference (May 19), plus an optional extra day of workshops (May 20). Presentations will focus on the concepts, technologies and techniques for meeting the challenges of eGovernment:

• José Manuel Alonso (W3C) - eGovernment Lead
• Robert Hoekman Jr (Miskeeto) - Interaction design and user experience
• Lisa Herrod - Usability and accessibility
• Scott Gledhill (News Digital Media) - Real world web standards
• Sebastian Chan - Social media and government (workshop)
• Cameron Adams - Frontiers of Javascript (workshop)
• Jason Ryan (NZ State Services Commission) - Government 2.0
• Jenny Telford (Australian Bureau of Statistics) - Opening government data
• Matthew Hodgson (SMS) - Social computing for knowledge management
• Ralph Douglas (AGIMO) - GovDex for secure online collaboration
• Patrick Lee (News Digital Media) - Javascript with legacy systems
• Andrew Kesper (ABC Online) - Ajax for dry data

It’s all very exciting! I’ve only ever been to Canberra once before, and never to present. I’m really, really looking forward to seeing all my Canberra friends on their home turf for a change… it’s going to be fun!

It’s a real honour to be presenting with such a smart group of local UX people as well as getting to meet a few new faces from O/S.

I’m particularly keen to have a quiet word with Andy Budd too. Not so much to do with UXie stuffs though. You see the last time we met was at an after party at SxSW in Austin, Texas. Within the first minute of talking to him, I choked, had a coughing fit and had to excuse myself… Yes I was sober. But talk about embarrassment! I looked like an alcoholic with TB. So I’m looking forward to representing in a better light this time…

I’m also looking forward to meeting Robert Hoekman Jr, not only because I’ve been reading his posts on the IxDA mail list for ages, but also because he’s a ‘Jr’… and I’ve never met one of those before. I’m wondering what the difference between ‘Jr’ and ‘the II’ is too. I’ll keep you posted, don’t worry about that.

But overall it’s just going to be a fun event and I’m really rapt to be presenting along side some great local friends and all round smart people.

Not only that, Melbourne is my home town, I can wear black on black and not look gothic, and it’s at the Melbourne Town Hall - what a brilliant venue.

So just in case you’re not sure, check out the line up… it’s got all areas covered:

• Andy Budd (Clearleft) - Interaction design and usability
• Robert Hoekman Jr (Miskeeto) - User experience evangelist
• Lisa Herrod - User testing
• Emily Boyd (Remember the Milk) - Ajax techniques for great user experiences
• Cameron Adams - Frontiers of Javascript (workshop)
• Donna Maurer - Getting content right
• Jackie Moyes (News Digital Media) - Turning research into products
• Oliver Weidlich - Mobile web user experience
• Steve Baty - Analysing research data
• Mathew Patterson (Campaign Monitor) - Designing for email

Hope to see you there… Do you think you can make it?

So consider this a little bit of user research on my part - Humour me if you have the time ;)

Where do you live and what do you do for work?

Tell me something about you that’s too unique and special to blend into a generic persona?

What did you have for dinner last night?

What makes you happy?

So when I saw this l33t eye chart recently, it seemed like the perfect addition to my More than Skin Deep preso. Much as I’d like to say it’s my design though… we’d all know I was lying.

The image is on Flickr, and is copyrighted as All Rights Reserved by maumeedb8. I was fortunate enough to receive permission from the designer to use it in my presentation… So ask nicely and they might just let you use it too ;)

Rachael Cook, co-founder of Minti, began the evening with a personal discussion on her experiences working and living in Silicon Valley, which she followed up with some really useful tips on working with Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors.

My presentation, Usability: More than skin deep, was based on a talk I gave late last year at Web Directions. What a way to spend my birthday! Really, it was fun :)

And for the first time in the history of the universe, the presentation has been recorded on video.

What can I say but…. Blame AWIA!

The installation uses a touch-driven Braille interface that triggers immersive audio visual material of seven blind people who reflect on their blindness.

:the braille box: is an interactive, audience-driven installation that uses blindness both as metaphor and as a documented experience to explore questions of cognition, meaning and perception in terms of the sensed world and the world built from language. The work uses a touch-driven Braille interface to trigger immersive audio and video to surround the gallery visitor in the contradictions and poetics inherent in the meaning of vision and its absence.

Braille Box opens this evening, November 7th, at 6pm and runs for 10 days until November 17th.

Don’t Look Experimental New Media Gallery
419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill (Sydney)
Gallery hours: Thursday - Saturday, 11am - 5pm

Come for one session or come for them all, it’s going to be an interesting day:

Where:

Telstra’s Experience Centre

Level 4, 400 George Street, Sydney

I’m on at 12:45 and will be giving a presentation similar to the one I gave at Web Directions, Usability: More than skin deep, which looks at the need to incorporate accessibility into all user experience research and design projects as a core component.

Presentation Sessions:
9:00am The importance of customer experience to a large corporate

Holly Kramer, Group Managing Director, Telstra Product Management, Telstra

9:15am Customer experience at Telstra

Cyrus Allen, Director of Customer Experience and Cecilia Hill, Customer Experience Lead, Data IP and Enterprise Solutions

10:00am User experience design of a hospital-based managed healthcare service

Fiona Meighan, User Experience Specialist, Telstra

10:45am The risks of medical equipment failing and why usability is important

Paul Hynes, Special Counsel, Moray & Agnew

12:00pm The impact of poor usability on people’s lives

James Breeze, Chief Experience Officer, Objective Digital

12:45pm Usability and accessibility

Lisa Herrod, Principal Usability Consultant, Scenario Seven

1:30pm Web usability for those with cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties - NSW Guardianship Tribunal case study

Roger Hudson, Principal, Web Usability

2:15pm Trustworthy technology - Privacy and identity in the healthcare industry

Kevin Cox, Founder and Chief Technical Officer, Edentiti

3:00pm Advanced telemedicine - Accessing health services remotely

Laurie Wilson, CSIRO

4:00pm Design thinking and usability

Melis Senova-Tapp, Chief Technology Office, Emerging Technology, Telstra

More information can be found on the Sydney UPA’s World Usability Day event page.

See you there!

Don’t make me do it

There are specific industries for which I will never work, and the gambling industry is on the top of that list. I know this because I’ve said no in the past and it felt GOOD.

While working for my last employer, a reasonably large piece of work came in from a very well known gambling company (I am choosing not to link to either as neither deserve a single click of recognition). At the time it was thought that all areas of the business would be involved in the project, including: technical testing, performance and load testing and usability. I was absolutely appalled that the company I worked for was excited by the prospect of ‘winning’ this job. It disgusted me to see that they were prepared to throw experts in performance and usability at a project that would, if successful, increase the opportunity for people to lose their money.

My position was made clear to both my group and the company that I would not work on the project, and that I was disappointed that the company was not prepared to take a moral stand and decline the work. Had I been forced to work on it, I would have resigned, without a doubt. There are numerous web agencies that decline work from industries deemed to be harmful, including gambling and tobacco, but sadly for my past employer the money was too enticing.

The ethics of judgement

This is a challenging topic for me as it highlights an area of my life in which I am judgemental of others. Not of those that gamble, but of those that promote, encourage and enhance the experience. It literally sickens me and I find no way of understanding why a professional, user experience consultant would ever choose to work on such a job.

So I’ll leave you with this, something I found during my research and the motivation for this post today. A conference session at the Mobile Gambling Summit, Asia 2005:

Ensure user needs are answered at every link in the mobile gambling value chain
Driving ARPU* means creating an engaging and glitch-free user experience that will leave your customers hungry for more. How to adopt a user centred approach throughout the mobile gambling value chain.

Roland Keller, Global Innovation Manager, Siemens
pdf source

*ARPU is an acronym for Average Revenue Per User

I really don’t know how people find themselves in these jobs, but I’m sure glad it isn’t me…

In fact, I haven’t even got as far as the bit where I wake up Cameron Adams (see the final bullet point!), who so politely fell asleep in the middle of my preso…!

But I’m a brave girl and am willing to take the risk.

So here it is, my second podcast in two days, Usability: More than skin deep.

I’ll be creating a Slidecast of this in the next few days and will let you know when that’s been uploaded…

Each of the events will vary depending on what the local organisers decide to do, but you can expect a lot of seminars, training and presentations being staged all over the place.

I’ve been asked to give my presentation Usability: More Than Skin Deep at the Sydney event, so if you missed the Web Directions conference this year, here’s your chance to see it for free ;)

Sydney UPA (Usability Professionals Association) is organising the Sydney event, which will be held at the Telstra offices on George street:

Where: Telstra Experience Centre, Level 4, 400 George Street, Sydney
When: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

A program of the days sessions is still being drawn up, but I’ll post it here once it’s released. I’ve heard that Roger Hudson will also be presenting at the event and that Telstra will be hosting tours of their user research facilities…

So mark the day in your diary and let me know if you’re planning on coming in!