Weeks 06–07 : Roles-Reflection

Talking about ‘In Web Design, Accessibility Shouldn’t Be an Afterthought’

Digital accessibility refers to the practice of building digital content and applications that can be used by a wide range of people, including individuals who have visual, motor, auditory, speech, or cognitive disabilities.

There’s a myth that making a website accessible is difficult and expensive, but it doesn’t have to. Designing a product from scratch that meets the requirements for accessibility doesn’t add extra features or content; therefore there shouldn’t be additional cost and effort.

Haagaard and Liz Jackson, design strategist and founder of the disabled List, offer great insight into the critical considerations that we need to keep in mind when designing disabled people.
“There needs not just to be disabled inclusion, but disabled leadership in these processes.” They emphasize the idea of designing with the disabled people, who we intend to serve through designs. I agree with their stance on the need for the involvement of disabled people in leadership positions. It cannot be a short-term consultation process but requires deeper participation at every stage of the design process. We see the shortcomings of this superficial ena\gagement in the example of Instagram. In 2018, Instagram created an algorithmically generated alt-text feature. This feature allowed people to hear descriptions of the photographs, specifically meant to assist people who are blind or have low vision. While a well-meaning product, it fails to support the population effectively for which it was designed. This failure can be linked to a lack of understanding of disabled people and their needs. There exist more such examples of the loss of well-intentioned products in different areas of design as well. Throughout history, we can find more examples of innovation’s failure to serve ‘marginal’ populations.

Reflection on the ‘WTJ : Win the Journey’ APP

-Q:

• What skills or perspectives you feel you bring to the project
• A personal experience that gives you insight into an aspect of the project
• Why you think the topic is important to address
• The challenges you feel exist in creating a successful design

-A:

When I first began to think about the product, I simply took my observations from everyday life, particularly the effect of the epidemic on people, and combined them with research into the pain points of my classmates, which persuaded me that the issue was important to address and allowed me to narrow down my target.

When conducting user interviews, we discovered two typical extreme target users: one is obsessed with making travel plans and is the main bearer of each trip; their pain point is finding details. The other is apprehensive about making travel arrangements and prefers to purchase a pre-made itinerary. As a result, based on the two extreme user profiles, we built a persona. It was enjoyable, and the personality clarity of the persona really helped us to follow up with a burst of inspiration.

Our team’s greatest obstacle is that we have no previous product-making experience. Our ideas may not be sophisticated enough to contribute to the app’s effective implementation.