Tag Archives: accessibility design

accessibility testing

Accessibility Testing: How To Balance Accessibility And Interactivity Across Devices

by in Build TV, Design, Femgineer TV, Product Development, Software Principles & Practice, , , , , 0 Comments
Interview with Laura Allen, Accessibility Program Manager at Google for Chrome and the Chrome Operating System

We’ve covered a lot when it comes to accessibility design. In the last two episodes of Build we tackled why accessibility needs to be prioritized in product design and the three key tips that are critical and will make a big impact on your product’s adoption. Next we’re going to tackle how to design for various devices and perform accessibility testing.

Let’s start by answering two questions that inspired this series from one of our audience members: Jane. These are two popular ones that you will find handy!

Jane wrote:

Poornima,

Thanks for tackling a wide variety of topics when it comes to building software products. One area that I’m curious about is accessibility.

As a user experience designer, I know accessibility is important, but I’ve struggled when it comes to balancing out accessibility across devices and also making mobile apps interactive and fun without compromising on accessibility.

How should I think about web versus mobile and balancing out fun and engaging interactions with accessibility in mobile apps?

Sincerely,

Jane                    

Jane thank you for writing in!

Laura Allen who is the Accessibility Program Manager at Google for Chrome and the Chrome operating system is back and together we are going to be answering Jane’s questions in today’s episode.

As you watch today’s episode you’ll learn:

  • What are the similarities and differences when it comes to designing for accessibility on web versus mobile devices
  • How to balance balance out fun and engaging interactions versus accessibility on mobile devices
  • The various types of accessibility testing: manual versus automated and tradeoffs associated with both

Here are links to the resources Laura mentions in the video:

Listen to the episode on iTunes!

You can listen to this episode of Build on iTunes.

Accessibility Design: How To Balance Accessibility And Interactivity Across Devices Transcript

Poornima Vijayashanker:        In the previous two episodes of *Build*, we talked about the importance of accessibility. And we shared three critical strategies that will help make a big impact when it comes to building and designing products. If you missed either of those episodes, I’ve included links to them below. In today’s final episode on accessibility, we’re going to talk about what accessibility means across devices for both web as well as mobile. Stay tuned.                   

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I’m your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, I invite innovators, and together we debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech.

We’re continuing our conversation on accessibility with Laura Allen, who is the accessibility program manager at Google for Chrome and the Chrome operating system. Thanks again for joining us, Laura.

Laura Allen:        My pleasure. Thank you.

How To Design For Accessibility On Web Versus Mobile

Poornima Vijayashanker:        One of the inspirations for this series on accessibility came from our audience member Jane, so I’m going to start off today’s episode by reading the question that Jane posed. Jane wrote, “Poornima, thanks for tackling a wide variety of topics when it comes to building software products. One area that I’m curious about is accessibility. As a user experience designer, I know accessibility is important, but I’ve struggled when it comes to balancing out accessibility across devices and also making mobile apps interactive and fun without compromising on accessibility. How should I go about thinking about web versus mobile and balancing out fun and engaging interactions with accessibility in mobile apps? Sincerely, Jane.”

Jane, if you’re tuning in to this episode, thank you for writing in. Laura, why don’t we start by answering Jane’s question to begin with. How do we balance out web versus mobile?

Laura Allen:        It’s a really great question. When you think about it, a lot of these concepts that we were talking about in previous episodes are actually going to stand true no matter what platform you’re actually designing for. Think back to the web content accessibility guidelines, WCAG. They talk about perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, and those sorts of concepts and principles that go within each of those categories. Just taking one example, color contrast. Color contrast, having really solid contrast between text and its background, that’s important no matter what device you’re on. It’s going to be the same sort of truth for if you’re on a mobile phone or if you’re on a desktop computer. A lot of these concepts are going to just span across platforms and be really relevant for you to consider.

Think About Making An App Accessible On Various Platforms

One thing that’s obviously a little bit different on mobile is that it’s clearly more touch oriented for most users. Things like touch targets and the size of your touch targets, that’s important to consider. Some people might not have as precise motion or control as they’re using their phone or tablet, but honestly, the lines are getting a little bit blurry anyway. Think about all the different devices that are out there now, like laptop computers that also have touch screens or convert and are then used in tablet mode. As designers, we’re starting to think about, “How do we just make an app itself accessible on all these different platforms, or a site itself?”

How To Balance Interactivity With Accessibility

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Let’s tackle Jane’s second question on how do we balance out fun and engaging interactions versus accessibility.

Laura Allen:        Yeah. That’s another really great question. I think something that we should keep in mind when developing for mobile is sometimes we just rely a little bit too heavily on this idea of gestures and touch-based interfaces. I understand why, of course. It’s typically being used by using touch. Some users aren’t able to actually use touch to operate a phone.

There’s something called switch access, for example, which basically allows you to pair a one-button, or two-button, or multiple-button switch and control a phone just using those external buttons. That’s just one example. Some people might be only using voice to control a device. Some people might be navigating with a screen reader, so as something flashes on the screen, they’re not able to actually perceive that and then catch it in time to actually take action. Thinking about what are these things that we’re assuming our users can do here, and then offering alternative ways to actually operate.      

Example Of Re-designing An Interaction For Accessibility

For example, if you have an app that you’re building where you have cards that you need to swipe away to take action, a swipe can work for some people, but for others, maybe that’s not going to be possible. How do we think about things like, “OK. Can we add a hidden close button here so that a screen reader could actually access that and somebody could just simply double tap to activate?” Lots of different things like that. Just, again, removing assumptions about how our users are interacting and then just building to cater to different groups.

Follow Platform Specific Guidelines When Designing For Accessibility

Poornima Vijayashanker:        I think your answers are going to be very helpful for Jane and the rest of our audience. Any final words of wisdom that you’d like to share when it comes to accessibility?

Laura Allen:        Sure, yeah, a couple things. First, just thinking again about mobile versus desktop and web and what not, I think it’s also really helpful when designing for mobile to be thinking about the platform-specific guidelines. This is like guidelines for more so just the interaction models for that platform. I know there’s the Android developers resources and site. iOS has the iOS human interface guidelines.

These things obviously go well beyond just the concepts of accessibility, but they’re really important to keep in mind because if you think about it. One example of what would be discussed is focus management. When you first open up an app, where is focus meant to go? What is the default? As you think about these concepts that are kind of illustrated through guidelines for each of these platforms, it’s really helpful to keep that consistent so that when a user who happens to be using assistive technology interacts with this app, they get a similar experience to what they’re used to. It’s a similar model for them, and therefore it’s an easier ramp-up curve to actually get introduced to your design. That would be one suggestion.

Manual Versus Automated Accessibility Design Testing

Another thing to consider, which we haven’t really discussed at this point: We talked a lot about auditing and integrating accessibility into your processes, and a lot of what we’ve talked about so far has been manual testing and the importance of really diving in, trying out the keyboard-only experience, or trying out a screen reader. Absolutely, I think that is so critical. I think honestly…I often get asked about manual versus automated testing, like what can we put in place to run automated tests. There are some great things to do, so there are automated tools, like, for example, there’s a tool, there’s an Android app called the Android Accessibility Scanner. It’s free. It helps to run an audit of your app’s accessibility and show you the results for things.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Oh, great.

The Limits Of Automated Accessibility Testing And The Need For Manual Accessibility Testing

Laura Allen:        Yeah. For things like missing labels on a button or color contrast, things like that, which I would imagine to be kind of low-hanging fruit that you look at and hopefully fix rather quickly. There are similar things on the web and desktop. Lighthouse is a great tool, which integrates with the Chrome Developer Tools.

There are lots of other types of tools out there that you can leverage to do some automated testing and audits, but in my opinion, automated can only go so far. That’s where you use it to kind of see a baseline, track progress over time and your results. But manual is really critical. Again, whether it’s you going through or having assistive technology users go through and give you feedback, that’s where you’re going to capture that more human interface experience. You’re going to understand what is the usability of this product, whether on mobile or on desktop. It’s just really critical to find that right balance of manual versus automated testing.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        This has been wonderful, Laura. We’ll be sure to include all the resources you mentioned below so that our audience can make sure to get access to them.

Laura Allen:        Great. Thank you so much for having me.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah, yeah. You’re welcome. This has been great.                   

That’s it for this week’s episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive more episodes like this. And be sure to share this with your friends, your teammates, and your boss. A thank you to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode. Ciao for now!

This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.                 

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

accessibility design

Accessibility Design: 3 Keys To Designing For Accessibility

by in Build TV, Design, Product Development, Women in Tech, , , , , , 0 Comments

Wasn’t last week’s episode on accessibility design in product development enlightening? Well get ready for more!

The goal of the last episode was to give you solid understanding of accessibility design, and all the relevant things you could think about when designing a product with accessibility in mind. But we understand it might be a lot to tackle, which is why in today’s episode we’re going to boil it down into 3 key tips that are critical and will make a big impact.

Laura Allen is back to enlighten us. Laura is the Accessibility Program Manager at Google for Chrome and the Chrome operating system.

As you watch today’s episode you’ll learn:

  • Why thinking about accessibility design is not just one person’s job, but a team effort
  • How to integrate accessibility design into your product development process
  • How to engage users and discover communities that are ready and willing to test products for you!

Here are some additional resources to checkout that Laura mentioned in the video:

Finally, Laura and I want to know, have you tried one of these three tips when it comes to incorporating accessibility design into your product? Which of these did you try, and what was the impact it made? If you’ve got others, be sure to include them in the comments below.

Listen to the episode on iTunes!
You can listen to this episode of Build on iTunes.

Check out these additional resources on product design:

Accessibility Design: 3 Key Tips To Keep In Mind When Designing For Accessibility Transcript

Poornima Vijayashanker:        In the previous *Build* episode, we talked about the importance of accessibility design. If you missed that episode, I’ve included it below. In that episode we covered as much as we could about a number of things that you could do to improve accessibility design for your product. Therefore, in today’s episode, we’re going to boil it down to the three main things that you want to think about when you’re designing and building your product. So stay tuned!

Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I’m your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, I invite innovators, and together we debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. We’re continuing our conversation today on accessibility design with Laura Allen, who is the accessibility program manager at Google for Chrome and Chrome operating system. Thanks again for joining us, Laura.

Laura Allen:        Absolutely. Thank you for having me again.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah. Last time we talked about a number of things that our audience can do when they’re thinking about designing products or revisiting their products and incorporating more accessibility design. Therefore, in today’s episode, I want to focus especially on the top three things you think are super critical and will make a big impact in people’s products.

Laura Allen:        Great.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        So, let’s start with the first.

Laura Allen:        First.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

Accessibility Design Tip #1: Train Your Team

Laura Allen:        OK, so I would say the first thing to do is to train your team.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

Laura Allen:        Thinking about accessibility, it’s not just one person’s job, and that’s something really important to keep in mind. This is a full team effort.

There are different roles that different people have to play from design to research to development to just release processes. All of those different things. Everyone needs to play their individual part, to be totally honest with you.

A lot of teams just will honestly benefit from just going through different trainings, leveraging resources that are out there. There are a lot of great things, like for example, I know a few of my colleagues actually have put together this awesome Udacity course just all about web accessibility. That’s a great resource. There are lots of videos out there. There’s this great YouTube series called The A11y Casts, it’s like A-11-Y, which is an abbreviation for accessibility. If you’ve seen that before, it’s A, 11 characters, Y, mean accessibility. So, lots of different things out there. We can definitely link some resources for sure.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

Laura Allen:        I would say, yes, training the team. Make sure everyone feels comfortable with the concepts of how to start building this in. That will go a really long way.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Nice. So, it’s not just to put the onus on the designers of the team but really your PMs, your engineers.

How To Scope Out Accessibility Design In A Project

Laura Allen:        Exactly. Thinking about, for example, like the designers when you’re scoping out a project, let’s incorporate accessibility into design docs. Think about, “OK, well what should the keyboard model actually look like?” just as one example. “What should contrast? Am I thinking about contrast in my mocks?” So, bringing it in at the design phase. And then basically working with your engineers as you’re developing. Testing for accessibility as you’re going along. Having PMs to help make sure that that process is happening, it’s being managed all the way through. I think it’s really critical. Basically, having everyone ramped up on this, everyone understand the fundamentals is really key.

Accessibility Design Tip #2: Integrate Accessibility Into The Product Development Process

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Wonderful. What’s tip number two?

Laura Allen:        Yeah, so tip number two would be to integrate accessibility. Honestly, I understand why a lot of people might get to the end, be ready to release a product, maybe even release it, and then say, “Oh, shoot. We forgot about accessibility.”

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

Laura Allen:        Maybe they’ll get bugs filed against them. That’s not the situation that you want to be in. It’s also just not an inclusive way to be building your products. I think just working hard to integrate into each step of the way, and that’s what’s helpful to have each different role on your team understand accessibility, of course. So, integrating so that when you’re preparing to launch a product. That’s at the phase. When you’re actually designing and building it, that’s when you’re working on these concepts. And implementing these principles instead of, “OK, we’re ready to go. We’re going to launch,” and then, “Uh-oh.”

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Yeah.

Laura Allen:        So, integration.

Accessibility Design Tip #3: Engage Test Users On Various Platforms

Poornima Vijayashanker:        And what’s the third and final most important thing people should consider?

Laura Allen:        Yeah. I would say to engage the users.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        OK.

Laura Allen:        This is something that’s really important, again. So, just understanding how…read a list of technology users or just users with any variety of accessibility needs are interacting with your product. One really simple step that I think is, if you’re going out and you’re conducting user research in the first place, why not add somebody who’s an assisted technology user right to that pool? Add someone who’s a screen reader user or someone who can only use the keyboard, for example, and can’t use a mouse. Try to diversify that pool. And make sure you’re collecting that user feedback. And understand how your product is working for a variety of different users.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Very nice. Yeah, keeping the user in mind. Are there places that you can try to recruit from? Seems like a lot of people might use something like user testing and there’s a few other services out there, but anything you would recommend to recruit people?

Examples of Organizations That Open to Helping With Accessibility Design Testing

Laura Allen:        Yeah. I mean, one thing that I know we’ve seen a lot of success with is partnering with organizations. Just as one example, we’re here in San Francisco today, the San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. That’s just one example of a fantastic organization where they’re more than happy to partner with teams or with individual researchers just to give feedback. They want to be helping. They want to make these products even better and better.

There are lots of different types of organizations that are similar to that, which maybe local for people who are not right here in San Francisco, also national organizations, international organizations. So, just thinking about how do you leverage different communities, and you’ll find that oftentimes if you just kind of approach different people and say, “Hey, we’d love your feedback on making this better and making it work better for you. Can you help us out?”

It helps if you’re going to go and have one of those conversations if you’ve thought through some of these core concepts and some of the things that are mentioned in the WCAG Guidelines, and you’re not showing up without having even considered accessibility. Right? It goes a long way to bring real people in, real users in, and just make the products that much better.

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Well, thank you so much, Laura, for boiling these down into three useful tips. I know our audience is going to get a lot of out this.

Laura Allen:        My pleasure. Thank you so much.

How Does Your Company Incorporate Accessibility Design Into Your Product?

Poornima Vijayashanker:        Finally, Laura and I want to know, have you tried one of these three tips when it comes to incorporating accessibility design into your product? Which of these did you try, and what was the impact it made? If you’ve got others, be sure to include them in the comments below. That’s it for this week’s episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode, where we’ll dive into incorporating accessibility design into web versus mobile. Special thanks to our sponsor Pivotal Tracker for their help in producing this episode. Ciao for now.                   

This episode of *Build *is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.