This weeks class, was entirely held online. The importance of, the use, the how and the whys of accessible designs was covered, by a guest speaker from the company Big Motive, David Fairweather.
David covered a massive range of topics when it comes to accessible design, particularly within UX design. Getting started, I had a pretty good idea and understanding as to what would be discussed and it’s impacts. A lot of it was common sense, others I knew from education and just personal experience in general.
David would go on to talk about why accessibility is believed to be at the heart of every design decision. He also went on to take a look at how designing for accessibility isn’t just about ‘compliance’. What I really liked to hear from this presentation, was how David explained that no matter how much effort you put into making your products and designs accessible, you won’t be able to please everyone, clients, users, audience, other designers, etc.
One of the handiest parts of what was discussed in this presentation was inclusive design, similar to accessible design. Inclusive design means including and learning from people with a range of perspectives. David provided a link that leads to a article created by Microsoft that discussed inclusive design, the impacts it has, what it is, how it is implemented into products.
They also provided many different documents that covers different aspects of inclusive design, which was really interesting to see just how many types.