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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.

Don’t assume you can just hire a sheryl

by in Startups, , , , , 2 Comments

Each week, Startup Edition poses a single question to a group of bloggers from the startup community. This week’s question is “How do you turn your idea into a startup?” Karen’s answer? Don’t assume you can just hire a “sheryl” to do all the hard work. 

by Karen Catlin

[dropcap bg=”#ba82e0″ color=”#ffffff”]A[/dropcap]few months ago, I introduced two of my friends to each other, both of whom are named Joe. Ever since, they’ve been working on a startup idea, doing the usual market research, talking with potential customers, designing wire frames, and so on. I caught up with the two Joe’s over lunch recently, and our conversation touched on a number of topics, including operational plans for their future company.

I was delighted they were already thinking of operations. It was in sharp contrast to something I heard from a prominent venture capitalist earlier this spring, who said there was a new phrase being used by the startup community: we’ll just hire a sheryl. That’s right: many early stage startups who VCs for funding have not yet figured out how to turn their idea into a successful business; they assume they’ll be able to hire someone as smart and capable as Sheryl Sandberg to do all the boring stuff, all the heavy lifting to make the company successful.

While I believe this VC meant this as a compliment to Ms. Sandberg that her first name has become a noun, synonymous with a critical role in a tech company, I took it as a sign of arrogance. Founders should never assume they can just hire someone to make their company successful. They’ll need to do more than just come up with the business idea, the prototype, and funding pitch; they’ll need to roll up their sleeves and do a lot of the grunt work. They’re going to have to scrub the proverbial toilets, and maybe even a real toilet or two.

What operational responsibilities should an early-stage startup team be thinking about? Depending on the product and the business model, the list might include:

  • Business development: What partners are critical to the success of your product? Who is going to manage and nurture these relationships?
  • Customer acquisition: Once your founding team has exhausted their list of contacts, how will you attract more customers? How much are you willing to pay for each one?
  • Customer support: How will customers contact you when they have problems? Who will respond to them?
  • Technology: How will you deploy your product? Will your initial implementation scale as you acquire new customers?
  • Metrics: What are your key metrics for measuring the success of your product? Who will analyze and report on this data?
  • Legal: What contracts will you need? Who will oversee the relationship with the law firm?

 

So, as you develop your initial product offering, make sure you know how you are going to be operationally effective. And your plan should not be “we’ll just hire a sheryl.”

–Karen

NOTE: This post is part of Startup Edition, weekly wisdom from founders, hackers, and designers who answer a single question each week. Click here to see other answers to this week’s question: “How do you turn your idea into a startup?”

Building Products to Service the Underserved

by in Education, Product Development, Startups, , , , , 0 Comments

Technology serves large enterprises making them efficient, and able to turn over a high profit. It also connects people together seamlessly to socialize.  But there are still a number of people who have yet to benefit from technology, one such group are the precariously housed, who make make up the majority of large cities like San Francisco.

Rose Theresa, our second winner of the GitHub scholarship for Femgineer’s Lean Product Development course, sought to change that!

Working in the Mid-Market Tenderlion neighborhoods, she heard many frustrations and time lost whenever the homeless had to line up every morning to have their names entered in the city reservation system for a bed.  To add to the frustration, she saw the amount of paperwork and phone calls required by social service organizations to find availability and to make a reservation.

Rose discovered that a huge amount of time was being wasted on checking availability and making reservations on certain shelter services, like beds.  She knew that some kind of information portal between the two would help save time and reduce needed paperwork.

With this knowledge, Rose and her team set off to put together a product at the Creative Currency Hackathon, an event that brings together developers,designers, and social finance experts to hack a product that helps social service organizations.

After many hours, they were able to put together a prototype called BRIDGE, that would allow shelter-seekers to make and check reservations themselves, and also check availability of other needed services like food and financial management at other local shelters as well via kiosk.

BRIDGE became a finalist in each of the demo days that is was presented, and was mentioned in the SF chronicle, The New York Times, Forbes, and Fast Company.

Although some time has passed since their initial launch at Creative Currency Hackathon, Rose is determined to complete a similar product called, MY CONNECT that would be a step up from BRIDGE that would also help the precariously housed as well as the social service organizations.

Rose is excited that Femgineer Lean Product Development course will guide her along that journey to get MY CONNECT launched and made ready to use by those less fortunate.

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