Browse Tag

accessibility

Designing Accessible Data Visualizations

Accessibility should be at the heart of every product, and it’s not any different for data visualizations. By making your graphs accessible, you not only ensure that everyone can use them but also that they are easier to understand.

Sarah L. Fossheim develops and designs software for the education sector and previously worked in cancer research. In medical software, for example, an inaccessible or confusing graph could lead to critical mistakes, such as giving the wrong medication to a patient.

To help everyone build better and accessible data visualizations that prevent confusion and misunderstandings, Sarah summarized ten dos and don’ts to keep in mind whenever you’re designing a chart or a graph.

https://fossheim.io/writing/posts/accessible-dataviz-design/

Documenting Accessibility

Image of a Guide to Documenting Accessibility

Unfortunately, accessibility is still an afterthought in many projects, even though fixing it later is usually a lot more expensive than doing it right from the beginning. Documentation is an effective means to help teams keep an eye on accessibility in every step of the process. But what do you need to consider?

Stéphanie Walter summarized how designers can document different aspects of accessibility and user interaction requirements. If you don’t have the time to document everything in your design mockups, Stéphanie suggests to focus on the things where there might be the biggest issues and misunderstandings.

Link: https://stephaniewalter.design/blog/a-designers-guide-to-documenting-accessibility-user-interactions/

Explaining Usability Heuristics – a quick guide

Usability Heuristics Explained - Whatwasithinking UKI bumped into a former student of mine this evening – pleasant surprise. We had a quick chat about work and life, and he asked me if there was a quick way to explain the Usability Heuristics to someone in his company that would not involve a lot of reference material.

“Heuristic evaluation” means identifying usability problems with your website by checking the website (layout, design, outer template, content) against 10 so-called best-practice guidelines published by Jakob Nielsen. Even after reading these “10 commandments of usability” you may end up a little confused as to what they mean and how to relate to them in the real (web) world. So let’s have a look at them… Keep Reading

10 reasons to learn web standards

10 reasons to learn web standardsI was just talking to an acquaintance of mine (a php developer) about website design when we started discussing accessibility and usability. His response was:

Accessibility and Usability? Is that this web standards stuff people are all so afraid of? Nah f*** that, who needs to learn those anyway.

Well, so why are web standards beneficial, here is my top 10… Keep Reading

The most useful FireFox Extensions of February

FireFox extensions roundup February 2009 - The Best FireFox extensionsThose of you following me on twitter know I tend to spend a bit of time every couple of days in finding new extensions for FireFox (and sometimes Thunderbird) which are making my life as an Information Architect, Web Designer or Project Development Manager easier. These extensions may be some all of us have been using for ages but never really realised we had them installed, or some we really wanted to see or use for some time, but never really spent the time researching whether these extensions are actually available. This is the list of February…
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Selling SEO effectively

How to sell SEO - whatwasithinking.co.ukToday I closed my 11th SEO proposal. This may not sound very impressive (and it isn’t a high profile client either), but it does to me, not only because it adds a few more numbers for the account handlers, but because it means that my sales strategy works (11 out of 11 closed) and that the data I am showing and preparing is useful.

One of my followers on twitter asked me what my trick is, so I thought I’d write down what is helping me close a sale, in the hopes it might prove useful for some of you.

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Firefox extensions for usability, accessibility and SEO experts

FireFox extensions for Usability, Accessibility and SEO expertsMy day to day work consists of a lot of time spending on the internet, looking at web presences of current clients, prospective clients and their (and our) competition. My tool of the trade being FireFox 3 (especially considering that IE seems to have a little problem). I am using a number of addons which really help my work-flow in the fields of usability, accessibility, SEO and occasionally information architecture.

I was asked by a couple of fellow twitter users to divulge my plugin list, and since I keep track of them myself at times I thought this post would come in handy for everyone.

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On Google Chrome – the new browser on the block

On Google Chroms - the new browser for the masses - Whatwasithinking.co.uk Google just launched its beta of Google Chrome, the in-house browser that is said to “combine a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.” The browser comes with a lot of interesting features such as a new tab look, a neat address bar giving you the options to search for keywords or auto-completing (even partial) web addresses, anonymus web surfing, web application shortcuts and the ability to isolate browser tabs in case anything goes wrong.

So let’s have a closer look at the browser compared to the competition… Keep Reading

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