Henny Swan
The Velvet Rope
Synopsis
There is little use in compliance with accessibility standards if your audience is unable to use your product. If a form is technically compliant is it accessible if a keyboard-only user takes three times longer than a mouse user to submit it? What is the point of primary links tidied away behind a menu if the menu icon is unfamiliar and difficult to understand?
Accessibility is not just about meeting the standards. It’s not just a developer’s sport. Or an exercise in quality assurance. It’s about equivalent user experience for people with different abilities. How we get there can be as innovative and creative as you want as long as the principles of accessible user experience are honoured.
As the idea makers, the innovators, the artists and the thinkers, accessibility starts with you. In this talk I will share real stories from the types of people who are using your products and how you can make their everyday accessible.
About Henny
Henny is Accessible User Experience and Design Lead at The Paciello Group with over 12 years’ experience in making web, mobile and apps accessible with a focus on accessible user experience, audio/video and mobile.
Prior to The Paciello Group Henny worked at the BBC on iPlayer (Web and Mobile), Sports, the Olympics, BBC Live and the BBC Standard Media Player. Henny was also Lead Editor on the BBC Mobile Accessibility Standards and Guidelines. Henny has previously worked for Opera Software, RNIB and Zhaodaola (a Chinese search engine).
Henny has contributed to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG), the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (UAAG), as well as been co-lead of the Web Standards Project International Liaison Working Group.
Video:
Slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/iheni/the-velvet-rope-making-user-experience-accessible
