Universal Design and Involving Users

We presented on “Universal Design and Involving Users” at the recent ’ICS Web Accessibility Spring 2023 Series’ run jointly by the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design at the National Disability Authority (NDA) and the Irish Computer Society.

These seminars are designed to help public bodies and other organisations understand how small decisions have an impact on peoples’ ability to access, understand and use digital content and services. How everyone has a part to play, from project managers to web developers, from internal staff to external web agencies.

The event had over one hundred attendees from the public sector who tuned in to hear about the work that InterAccess are doing involving people with disabilities, as well work that the HSE are doing around user centered design and inclusion.

So you’ve had an accessibility audit but can anybody use it?

Our talk, which showed some videos from our usability testing sessions involving people with disabilities on a client project, went down very well.

There was great engagement from the attendees. It is great to see the interest and awareness around accessibility at the moment, and while this is focusing mostly on auditing we know there is a growing need to involve people with disabilities in usability testing. It may seem like an extra step for some right now, but we home more will see the value.

Usability testing grounds the user experience in a real way and is useful to validate all of the improvements you have made from your accessibility testing. It also humanises the accessibility project, and grounds your efforts more in terms of its impact on the people we are trying to serve.

At InterAccess we know how important this is. Our clients benefit from the usability testing we offer in many ways. If you are interested in involving real users in your projects, do get in touch and we will be happy to help you make this happen.