James C.

In addition to my talk at Write the Docs, I created the sketchnotes, which are posted here: https://lnkd.in/g5Jmej-v

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This is a great post for designers moving into management/leadership roles. The nature of your job changes dramatically and it's important to figure out the most effective ways to help your team and the company. As noted in the article, it's very easy to have your time consumed by managerial tasks (operational work). Being deliberate about how you want to spend your time, focusing on the change you want to bring about and working consistently towards that end are critical skills to learn. #UX #Design #DesignLeadership https://lnkd.in/e_g4TRJx

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#CoDesign according to the #NDIA #NDIS Doesn't look like #CoDesign. No mention of #UNCRPD in *OUR* (ie #NDIA's) #CoDesign principles. A little hint: the #UNCRPD is *THE* design determinant. #CoDesign *CAN'T* happen without explicit commitment to #UNCRPD. Explains why the #NDIS Bill breaches #HumanRights The #CoDesign Advisory Group - which "provides strategic advice to the NDIA on the implementation of co-design and engagement processes in the disability community" -  hasn't met in 9 months. As I explained in my recent article, #CoDesign has been weaponised. https://lnkd.in/d8VMKkvZ Take a look. #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs #RoboNDIS #ClassAction #RoyalCommission robondis.org Mark Toomey Tony Ridley, MSc CSyP FSyI SRMCP Karen Kline Samantha Connor Mark Sweeney Nick Avery Graham Taylor Tara Hannon Muriel Cummins Georgia van Toorn Dr George Taleporos (GAICD, PhD) Shirley Humphris Peter Gregory Jordon Steele-John #BillShorten David Pocock Vinod Ralh Paul Flintoft 👇 👇👇 https://lnkd.in/dKq7mdzZ

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Thanks so much to folks who came to my talk, Accessible UX: Design for the Rest of Us, last week at SIC! If you missed it, I'll be giving it again later this month at Web Accessibility in Mind: https://lnkd.in/gmQEYd-8 The talk focuses on design best practices to better support people with cognitive disabilities and chronic illnesses that impact information processing and fine motor skills. I don't do design talks often anymore, but this one is near and dear to my experience!

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As a design leader, you work for your team—not the other way around. Learn how to keep your #UXteam happy, creative, and always on schedule. https://lnkd.in/eksZbUXM #DesignLeadership #TeamManagement #UXDesign #Productivity

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Wow, it is nice to see some of the impact the course I authored with Designlab is having on teams both big and small. Emilyann Gachko thank you for sharing this case study and how it was received by the team at The Home Depot :) If you are interested in increasing your design skills through #usability and #accessibility check out the course. #ux #design #hcd https://lnkd.in/gEdC3NBV

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AI is the buzzword of the day, but it's simply the next step in our technology evolution. Evolving generative AI interactions are repeating human-computer interaction history. Remember those green screens and books filled with computer prompts, or learning how to use a search engine? Perhaps you do, maybe you don't, but either way AI has modified the way we do this by using natural language! #AI #technologyevolution #naturalanguageprocessing

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In this Forrester article, Gina Calcaterra Bhawalkar discusses her trip to Config 2024 and the new features in Figma that help with design systems and creating accessible experiences: https://lnkd.in/e4-nKnTH #Accessibility #Design #WebAccessibility

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I want to share another thank you note to Michelle Chin and Tim Legierse for hosting me on zeroheight's Beyond the Button podcast. And thank you Nefertiti Dukes for getting us all organized and putting together some very thoughtful and challenging questions. Topics include how... 🌱 Adoption grows when tools are trusted internally 🤝 Reuse builds brand consistency and results in customer trust 🚀 Organizations with strong systems are more competitive 🧬 Community contribution grows and grounds the system #DesignSystems #Contribution #CustomerTrust

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There are no silly accessibility questions - color contrast version! In accessibility we talk a lot about color contrast, and we assume everyone knows what that means. We usually think that if someone isn’t choosing colors with high contrast then they’re doing that on purpose. But none of us were born knowing what color contrast is, so here's a quick intro! When we talk about color contrast we mean the difference between two different colors. Sometimes we mean text and a background color, and sometimes we’re talking about an element (like a button, form field, or focus indicator) with the background color. Other times we might be talking about two colors that are next to each other in a pie chart. In accessibility we use a specific way of determining color contrast. The scores are written as __:1 (like 4.2:1). If the score is higher it means the contrast is higher, and lower scores mean lower contrast. The highest score is 21:1, which is the score black and white get when they’re compared to each other. The lowest score is 1:1, which is the score a color has with itself. There’s a formula to determine the ratio, but my brain shuts down when math is involved, so I’ll link a resource below in case you want to learn more. And we don’t need to know how to calculate the ratio, because there are tools that can do that for us! You can use the tools by getting the code for the colors (usually a hex or RGB code) and inputting it into the fields. The tool will calculate the ratio and tell you whether it’s high enough. If the contrast is between text and a background color then the size of the text matters too. To meet the accessibility standard most companies aim for, the ratio between the colors should be: - 3:1 for large text (it’s considered large text if it’s 18 pt or larger or bold text that’s 14 pt and larger) and also for non-text elements - 4.5:1 for regular or small sized text Generally higher contrast is better, but having white text with black text can be difficult to read, so the goal isn’t to just make everything white and black. Having a color that’s close to white and a color that’s close to black will help make sure lots of people can read it. People can't do something if they don't know it exists, so color contrast is important! Color Contrast Resources: - WebAIM Contrast Checker - https://lnkd.in/e6D6xNEb - Colour Contrast Analyzer (CCA) - https://lnkd.in/e_kAgShu - Contrast plugin for Figma - https://lnkd.in/eGzATeAA - Coolors Contrast Checker - https://lnkd.in/eX9upvSz - How to calculate colour contrast (article) - https://lnkd.in/e9ArEZ8Z - Accessible color palette generator from Venngage - https://lnkd.in/eHACA3Jm #Accessibility #A11y #ColorContrast

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This is an interesting talk highlighting some of the issues that can occur on a website when an accessibility overlay is used. #accessibility https://lnkd.in/gSyJF5WF

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Design Systems folks — when was the last time you shipped something that really felt impactful? Design Systems is in a quandary right now: somehow both a necessary part of building UI, and recognized as "not delivering value." DS teams were heavily impacted by layoffs, and as Noelle Lansford said in her great article recently (link in thread): > The teams I spoke with emphasized that there was a significant deficit between what the design system team advertised and what was delivered. However, perhaps the more concerning point they made was: Even if all of the success criteria was met, when it came to downsizing, the design system appeared redundant at best. Yikes. How can we know design systems are a powerful tool for delivering consistency, velocity, and efficiency, and also know that we’re not delivering on that promise? And forget "impact as business value" for a second — doesn’t it just feel good when someone uses your work and turns to you and says, wow, that made my work so much easier, thank you. The reality for a lot of DS practitioners is more like grinding for weeks on a component that maybe one team half-heartedly used – incorrectly? Or writing thousands of words of documentation that nobody looks at. I don't think we're "not shipping impactful work" because we're collectively bad at our jobs, or because design systems don't actually help teams move faster. I think we're focused on the wrong things.

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Catching up all of the GPT-4o updates, loving these use cases that'll be so powerful for accessibility https://lnkd.in/g5nfHrQ5

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Great article but I’m not 100% in agreement as it can depend on what is already known with regards to users with specific needs or preferences, particularly when it comes to UX patterns and design practices. Qualitative research is more suited to stimulate design ideas rather than evaluate decisions, as trying to extrapolate large audiences from the opinions of a few is problematic and runs the risk of turning into as much of a box ticking exercise much in the way auditing can. When it comes to design research and auditing we can have very short memories which maybe why we think we always need to test everything with everyone, and in doing so loose any chance of statistical significance in our UX findings. I like the point about surveys which would work particularly well with multivariate testing, but you also need to segment that data by need and preference or it runs the risk of only informing a mainstream perspective, which is why a segmentation tool like ab11y.com adds value as it segments the audience by need without diagnosis, and avoids issues with privacy and GDPR. As long as the survey captures both functional and emotional data it is a really useful way of ensuring inclusive design optimisation is part of the product’s ongoing evolution. Maybe the issue is that the questions we ask are not specific enough? Maybe we don’t know about how users with X need(s) who have Y preferences interact with pattern Z. Then you build a prototype that enables you to answer that question. This means not every prototype needs to be accessible to everyone, including not being relevant to mainstream audiences if we have no specific research questions, or if we are not benchmarking comparative experience against them. Not sure about the conflation of WCAG testing prototypes or with inclusively user prototypes, especially using automated tools, as you might think that pars of the prototype or equivalent system are inaccessible, but then you are jumping to conclusions about people’s skills, capabilities and coping strategies. Maybe instead not assume that all designers are non-disabled? Maybe if you want a product to be useable by screen readers hire a blind designer or design researcher who can help with understanding the different behaviours and strategies possible using different technologies. This would help build capability in the design team too. I’d change one of the statements to: The real ability to ensure an accessible and inclusive system is not by evaluating a final product at the end of a project; it’s by assessing user needs at the start and then evaluating any outstanding unknowns as part of the iterative prototypes along the way, then gathering data that can be segmented by need to ensure continual optimisation. For shift left to work I believe the key is to build on a knowledge base rather than treat user research data and inclusive design knowledge as a disposable commodity.

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🏔 "Accessibility gets complicated." As we work more with people with lived experience and assistive technologies, our team asks more questions and wants to dig deeper. As that curiosity grows, we’ve made investments in training so we don’t miss out on the opportunity to add to our team’s culture. → Working with our accessibility partners, we’re consistently reminded that there's a range of lived experiences that demand empathy and research. → Screen readers and assistive technologies are complex technologies with nuance that require time and exposure. → WCAG guidelines while robust, can be very technical, very deep and require someone to map multiple needs across a massive amount of information. 🔍 With some research and help from our partners we’ve collected a set of resources for onboarding and training for our team: → Google Web Accessibility Course on Udacity provides an easy on ramp for folks to get some shared language and background into the basic concepts of accessibility. https://lnkd.in/gdCFJ2-C → Digital Accessibility Foundations W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and edX is a rare course on accessibility that provides considerations for designers and product managers to engage alongside more technical team members. https://lnkd.in/gASpZWdY → Deque University Certification Preparation from Deque Systems, Inc provides the go to certification training for engineering folks who are ready to get an official CPACC certification. https://lnkd.in/gp5rPu6J 💎 For other folks looking to setup your own resources for your team here are our big takeaways: → Make accessibility part of your team culture with simple onboarding material to get everyone on the same page. → Provide a range of resources to serve design, product and engineering team members to meet people where they are, including partnerships with organizations that can provide access to people with lived experience. → Advocate for the internal funding and work with your leadership team to consider the organizational value of getting folks on the team trained and certified. 👏 Thanks to Mike Gifford, CPWA from CivicActions for providing examples and guidance of what we rolled out for Exygy onboarding and training. 🙏 Thanks to Sean Dougherty from LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired for his invaluable input and continued partnership. #accessibility #accessibilitytraining #accessibilityonboarding

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For an organization committed to the practice of user experience design, the Interaction Design Foundation doesn’t seem to value their own ideology. I’ve been a member for years and recently served as a local leader (of which I resigned a year ago and they have yet to remove me from the role). I’m finding their billing processes to be on the verge of questionable UX practices: ·     My membership increased 31% with no notification before billing. I was told that a single notification had been sent a year ago buried in an email with a subject line of “We have updated our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Pricing Structure.” Do they not realize that subject lines such as this are white noise in people’s inboxes and begs to be deleted without reading? ·     To prevent the upcoming charge, the user must contact the main office and have them remove the store payment details. There is no ability for the user to do this themselves. ·     There is also no option to opt out of recurring charges. This is akin the dark practice of subscription services that lure users with trial period in hopes the user will forget to cancel before the period expires.   ·     The user can cancel their membership. However, the user loses access to all materials, content, and account details even though the user has prepaid for the upcoming year. This entices the user to delay cancelling only to encounter the same pain points the following year. ·     User is sent an invoice AFTER the charge has been applied. No notification of upcoming billings. ·     When asked to refund the membership charge, the admin basically responded with “The reason we’re unable to offer a refund guarantee on the renewal of memberships is that we already have a money-back guarantee after sign-up . . . we’d have to charge higher prices if we offered unlimited refunds and that’s why we make our policies crystal-clear, doing everything in our power to ensure members understand our fair terms.” This statement basically has the overtone of: It’s not that our communication and user experience is insufficient, it’s the user’s fault. IDF needs to reassess their membership and billing practices if they want to maintain any integrity in the field. As a hiring manager, I do not look at organizational memberships as having any influence in hiring decisions.  My advice for those wanting to increase their knowledge and break into design, rather than pay a yearly $264 membership fee, there are many free resources, podcasts, and articles that will help you achieve the same results. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

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The UXPA Boston conference felt really energizing this year. It was so great to see multiple presentations around accessible design and research. It was also wonderful seeing so many familiar faces. Thanks to everyone who attended our talk on building an accessibility team. You can find the slides here: https://lnkd.in/gcTd9wiS #UXPABOS #UXPABOS24

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