Karen Herr

Lucy Woodcock spends much of her time at work 'doing' diverse usability testing. She has recently blogged "#UserTesting Unveiled: A Step-by-Step Exploration" and aims to demystify the process. Here are #KeyTakeaways from her blog: 1. Importance of #InclusiveDesign and #Accessibility: Inclusive design and accessibility are crucial factors in shaping user experiences. User testing with people with disabilities can help reach a broader audience and cater to diverse needs. 2. Meticulous Planning: User testing begins with meticulous planning, including setting dates, arranging calls, and recruiting diverse participants. A clear research plan aligned with client objectives ensures a valuable and inclusive testing project. 3. Remote Usability Testing: Remote usability testing provides flexibility for testers and clients alike. It gives clients the opportunity to observe sessions first-hand, turning the testing day into a collaborative experience. 4. Analysis of Results: Analysis of user testing results is a crucial part of the process, highlighting key issues and forming recommendations. Different tools and methods may be used for analysis, but the goal remains insightful insights and recommendations. 5. Comprehensive User Testing Report: The user testing report is the end deliverable for clients, containing evidenced insights and relevant recommendations closely linked to client objectives. A clear, justified, and measurable report increases implementation and improves accessibility. 6. Continuous Improvement: A #retrospective allows the team to review successes and identify areas for improvement, ensuring #adaptability to evolving client needs and making each project a stepping stone to future success. 7. Enquiring about User Testing Service: User testing services with companies like Accessible Me Ltd, eLaHub Ltd, or AbilityNet ensure you asking the right people the right questions at the right time and making the best use of their feedback. 8. Self-Conducting User Testing: Learning how to conduct user testing can provide reassurance in making accessibility improvements and focusing resources in the right areas. Like AbilityNet, Accessible Me Ltd offers training courses (both online and offline) for those interested in starting their own #AccessibilityTesting. Accessible Me Ltd's focus is in the #eLearning, #LearningAndDevelopment, and #BrandMarketing areas; helping to make learning accessible to everyone. These takeaways highlight the importance of meticulous planning, remote usability testing, thorough analysis, and continuous improvement in creating inclusive and accessible user experiences through user testing.

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Uncomfortable truth: WCAG compliance does not mean actual accessibility. [WCAG is the acronym for Web Accessibility Compliance Guidelines] – WCAG do not consider *all* accessibility issues. – WCAG do not consider all best practices.  – WCAG do not consider overall inclusion. – WCAG do not consider usability. Examples of bad practices that cause accessibility issues and that are ignored by the WCAG: – Use of non-descriptive link text – Use of low-contrast typefaces – Use of complicated layouts – Use of unfamiliar patterns – Use of more than one H1 – Use of too many emojis – Use of autoplay video* *(no, it’s not enough to provide a stop button, or to make it stop after 5 seconds. I only need 2-3 seconds to get sick) There is a big difference between providing a technically and legally compliant service, and providing a service that is truly accessible and inclusive. STOP asking the question “does it comply with WCAG?”  START asking the question “can everybody use this?” Adopting inclusion will expand your business (and, why not, your karma too). In a nutshell: Be compliant and legal. Of course. But also: don’t be a dick. Want to get a basic intro on how to not be a dick, and expand your karma instead? Sign up to my free Accessibility Primer. https://lnkd.in/dJmjqM3P Image description: a concrete step with a round, blue sticker in the middle saying “Good Karma”. Adapted from a photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash. #a11y #DontBeADick #GoodKarma #Accessibility #WCAGCompliance #HatchConference

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Today I’m sharing some resources for writing inclusive content. Maybe you’re a UX writer, content specialist, or designer who writes. If you’ve been wondering how to make your words work for more people, then these resources will help you! Content makes such a big difference in how inclusive and accessible things will be, so you have a lot of power! Resources: Accessibility Strategies for Your Content Team from Deque Systems, Inc (article) - https://lnkd.in/eigMrhY7  Content Design for Accessibility: Why It Matters and How To Do It on Medium (article) - https://lnkd.in/eEyXTQkf Creating Accessible Content: 5 Rules for Writers from Bureau of Internet Accessibility (article) - https://lnkd.in/ebPbVq_G Creating accessible content from Texthelp (article) -  https://lnkd.in/eV6SNS-K  Dyslexia friendly style guide from the British Dyslexia Association (article) -  https://lnkd.in/e36z8Pwk 50 Ways To Make Your Content Accessible by Stephanie H. (article) https://lnkd.in/eAdghX52 Marketers in Progress: How we’re building accessibility into our content practice from Siteimprove (article) -  https://lnkd.in/gffkJFm3 Neuroinclusive Content Design from axe-con (video) - https://lnkd.in/dkeGjMmC Plain language guidelines from Plain Language . Gov (site) - https://lnkd.in/eSQRFt-A If you have accessibility resources for content then please share them in the comments! And I'd especially love some recommendations for videos. I only have one video on this list, and it would be great to have a wider range of options so people can use what works for them. #Accessibility #A11y #AccessibilityMatters #UXWriting #Content #ContentWriting #AccessibleContent

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If you really want to understand PDF accessibility in depth, then don't miss this glossary. A group of dedicated international experts (The PDF Accessibility LWG hosted by the PDF Association) has compiled this glossary. Does it help you to better understand accessible PDFs? Which terms are you missing? #PDFUA #AccessiblePDF

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Accessibility and inclusive design friends - what are your favorite videos to refer people to or use as resources? A lot of the things I use as references are articles or websites, and that means people who learn better from videos aren’t getting information in a way that works for them. If you have videos you recommend then I'd love to hear about them! Anything in the inclusive design or accessibility field is fine - they can be on any topic, for any audience, and they can be short or long. #Accessibility #A11y #AccessibilityMatters #InclusiveDesign

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I think this article does a good job of highlighting the limitations of automated testing. This is because WCAG is complex and requires human interpretation and testing to identify all the different errors. It also highlights how automated testing is good at preventing regression by tracking progress over time. This is why lots of companies and higher education institutions are using automated testing to track the number of errors on a webpage over time. #accessibility https://lnkd.in/g4Ba-S6P

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Here is a brief note and guidance on creating an accessibility audit report template for your next project. https://lnkd.in/gsBMsrhP #Accessibility #Report #Project #Testing

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It’s not always easy to understand what #accessibility compliance means in a specific geography and/or sector, and how you ensure your company and products adhere to the relevant regulatory requirements. For companies that are offering software and services for governmental customers in the U.S., Section 508 compliance is critical. We wrote a guide to help you understand the details.

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Hoo boy! We have a live one. My post about UX needing to professionalize attracted lots of attention, not all of it the good kind. I know that my posts stir up a few nutcases, but this is something else entirely. If you're reading this, you know the state of UX is dire. In fact the state of technology is dire. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, the chaff have risen to the top, and they have molded tech orgs in their own image. None of this is news. BUT with the rising tide of outrage in our community and indeed in the wider world, I expect the absolute worst opinions to be kept mum. My appraisal of the current situation was that the bad guys were still very much in power but starting to feel enough fear that they'd at least refrain from, oh, I don't know, openly defending ageism. But apparently, I'm naive. Because along came some guy named Simonas Maciulis, and he said the quiet part out loud. By his words, the "older generation of UX folk" are "stuck with outdated ways" and have "ignorance" of all sorts of things. How far gone do things have to be that someone feels totally comfortable, totally immune from consequences, saying this? If this guy could back up his outrageous statements with any sort of excellence, I'd understand how he ended up with 31,000 followers. Buuuut, the thing is, our friend Simonas is a "senior product manager" at Wix, a company INFAMOUS for UX so bad, a 5 year old could design it better. In fact, just this past week, I've lost 10+ hours dealing with Wix's tech support because their trash fire of an editor can't even make a TAB CONTAINER work. I've also had like five people asking "why are you still using Wix??" Good question. Other than the fact I have some legacy stuff built in it, there's no reason at all. And this week, I'm migrating everything into Framer. So yeah, this guy spews bigoted word salad and defends the lack of professionalism in our industry, all without any sort of body of work to demonstrate that he's anything more than a talking head, but 31,000 people think he's worth listening to. THAT is why UX today is a joke. Because the hydra has thousands of heads. I know because they liked his reply on my post. These people have overrun our profession and I, for one, will not take this lying down. It's time to publicly call out, publicly shame, in fact, those who do us the favor of exposing their complicity with the system that has made technology products so terrible, and even jeopardized civil society. It's rare someone makes it this easy. Look, I could be overly pessimistic. Entrenched power follows a bell curve of class consciousness. When they're safe, they don't feel a need to justify themselves to the masses, so they stay quiet. When they're an endangered species, they are also quiet as a survival strategy. But in the middle? Right when they start to sense a threat, that's when they're the loudest. That's where we are in the cycle. We're drawing them out. Don't stop now.

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I spend much of my time at work 'doing' diverse usability testing. Here's a recent blog post that I wrote to demystify the process: https://lnkd.in/eFqjDwBR #abilitynet #usertesting #accessability

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Excellent article by Vitaly Friedman

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Here's a lovely little list explaining some of the more common terms used by Accessibility Specialists.

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Can someone help me? Axe-core includes a best practice rule specifies that all page content should be contained by landmarks. On the other hand, the WCAG tells that the technique is sufficient. I'm confused 🤔 #a11y #wcag #axe

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Why should accessibility matter to you? Because it's the law, and some require documentation on any plugins or themes they use. How this applies to theme & plugin developers & agencies sourcing those themes & plugins For the laws regarding public sector, most sourcing of plugins & themes requires an Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) on those plugins & themes. For example, Equalize Digital had to create an ACR before NASA could even consider using their plugin on NASA's website. An ACR is created from a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). It's sometimes called a "completed VPAT". Technically, a VPAT is blank template, ACR is completed. As ADA Title II and EAA go into effect, many more websites will require ACRs before they can even consider a given theme or plugin for use. Overview of the laws Here's an overview (not comprehensive) of laws around the world. All of these laws reference Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These are guidelines maintained by W3C (same folks who maintain HTML & CSS & other standards). There are three levels, A, AA, AAA. A is basic, AA is standard, AAA is a whole lot. For all of the laws, level AA is used. For individual laws there are frequently minor modifications to the version of WCAG. Australia has the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) which applies to any organization that serves the public, including both government institutions and private companies. The DDA provided for a third-party organization, the Australian Human Rights Commission, which expanded DDA to cover digital accessibility. It is currently being updated from WCAG 2.0 to 2.2. Canada has a few provincial laws, most notably the Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) public-sector organizations of any size and private-sector organizations with 50 or more employees to make websites comply with WCAG 2.0. European Union has EN 301 549 which applies to public sector, and the new EAA which goes into effect in June 2025. That will mean WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 (depending on how each country wrote their legislation) for eCommerce websites when the business has revenue of 2 million or more Euros or 10+ employees. Some laws will allow competitors to report you and allow for monetary penalties. United States has Americans with Disabilities Act & Section 508. ADA Title II applies to state & local government and organizations which receive funding from them. ADA Title III applies to business & nonprofits that serve the public. Section 508 applies to federal government. Section 508 is WCAG 2.0. ADA Title II says WCAG 2.1 by April 2026 (some orgs will have until 2027). ADA Title III does not have specific rules, but in court cases has resulted in WCAG 2.1.

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This is a really good article about common techniques of browsing the web with only a keyboard. I consider this a prereq for anyone working in the accessibility field. Martin does a beautiful job keeping the concepts simple and straightforward. #Accessibility #Keyboard https://lnkd.in/eQGKbADX

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I'll expect more from you if you tell me you want to make something accessible and §508 conformant. The 508 digital accessibility standards are mirroring WCAG 2.0 AA. That version of WCAG came out in December 2008. In other words, that standard is 16 years old... So I'm going to push for you to, at a minimum, adhere to the latest version of WCAG. That is, WCAG 2.2. By doing that, you'll still conform to §508, but you'll also make things more accessible for your end users. Also, remember, accessibility standards are the starting line, not the target.

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I'm adding a section on my site for case studies of accessibility work I've done and it's similar to a blog; i.e. list of case studies that lead to individual pages. I've used different CMSs but wanted something small that didn't require loads of config, login etc. I decided on a similar approach to what we used in the AO Design System for our docsite, rendering local mdx files in Next pages. Since this is Next v14, I'm using the app router architecture instead of page router. I think it's easier for dynamic routes but initially didn’t like the generically named 'page.tsx' in each route folder. The app router seems familiar and I can’t help thinking it reminds me of Vue2/Vue Router? When looking at the metadata, I came across the Frontmatter extension. It acts as a CMS within VSCode and is customisable, but I haven’t fully explored it yet. It has SEO recommendations, simple metadata fields that can be changed in the setting file, I can create content and preview the mdx pages while editing. Because this is my own site, I can be a bit more creative with what I use/how I do things. I’m sticking to mostly stable things for the main functionality, because I don’t want to have to totally rebuild in 6 months, but it’s interesting to try out a few new things here and there.

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The latest draft of WCAG 3 (W3C Accessibility Guidelines) was recently released for comment. I'm still considering what specific issues, if any, I should comment on, but I do have some general observations. Mostly, I really miss the traceability back to the POUR principles of WCAG 2 (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust). Maybe they will return once the guidelines and outcomes are more stable, but currently it is more structured around interface modalities (forms, layout, interactive components). It feels more like a low-level cookbook for developers than a considered approach to accessibility. That's not to stay there's not great content in there, there is, and the committee is doing a great job, it just doesn't feel very structured and traceable, and somehow it doesn't feel centred on users. Maybe it's where I diverge from the goals of WCAG 3? I do want a better cookbook, I just don't think standards documents should be cookbooks. I think it's also partly because WCAG 3 is still quite early in it's production, and the number of outcomes is still quite low (there are guidelines, outcomes and methods where WCAG 2 has principles, guidelines, success criteria and separate how-to's) but it still somehow doesn't feel right. My own research (and hence my own bias in this) considered accessibility in terms of user capability in different design spaces, and interaction with information contained within them. Visual, sonic, haptic. It's why I look for a clear statement that information presented to users is available to ALL users; information that can be manipulated by users can be manipulated by ALL users in an equivalent and timely manner; changes in context and new information is available to ALL users in a timely manner. The guidelines and outcomes of WCAG 3 can happily hang off that sort of requirement, like they do to some extent with POUR, but it's not in the current draft. I do get uncomfortable when I see something like, "Input constraints or conditions (required line length, date format, password format, etc) are programmatically and visually indicated". Which is entirely true, but the Visual design space is only one of three; we need that higher level requirement where inputs have labels that can be accessed by ALL users regardless of how they are is provided. The statement promotes the visual design to be definitive and all other sensory interaction to secondary through "programatic" access. Just doesn't sit right on its own. To follow the analogy to its logical conclusion, I'm looking for some content on basic food science in the document before I get to recipes and cake decoration.

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