Tools of Inspiration

Accessibility tools are not the most glamorous of playthings. More often than not, you make do with a toolbar across your browser; a set of guidelines, or, at best, heuristics; and, if you are lucky, a screen-reader. To the uninitiated, they appear highly technical and unwelcoming. Someone said to me recently it took working alongside a person with very little sight for a couple of hours to transform the meaning of the great wad of guidance she'd been handed about making websites accessible. Suddenly it seemed like an important venture, rather than a test of patience.

Given that many designers see accessibility as a technical chore, not an opportunity for creative inclusive design, it is a shame more do not have the chance to work directly with users for whom access might be an issue. However, most product testing is carried out with users of working age, recruited by market, not for the range of their characteristics. And not that many designers get to sit in on user testing anyway.

With this in mind, the UTOPIA project team, led by Alan Newell of Dundee University, decided to build tools of inspiration. If designers do not go to users, let the experience of the users come to them. UTOPIA (Usable Technology for Older People: Inclusive and Appropriate) is a Scottish Higher Education Funding Council funded project, involving the Universities of Dundee, Napier, Glasgow and Abertay Dundee, researching the relationship between older people and technology. Newell and his team were charged with convincing industry that it is important to consider older people when developing new products, and to educate them in how to do so. (Via uiGarden)