It’s been a year since I made the leap from higher education to a job in accessibility at The Paciello Group, or TPG as we are more commonly known. Here in my anniversary post I reflect on some of the good stuff that’s happened this past year.
Whitney Quesenbery and I completed our book, A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experiences, and Rosenfeld Media sent it out into the world in January 2014. We’ve been getting great feedback about how accessible and usable the book is, which is just what we were shooting for — to make accessibility approachable and achievable. There’s an excerpt from the interaction chapter at A List Apart and the personas are on UX Magazine.
We included interviews in the book, which we really enjoyed doing — chatting with people in the accessibility community about topics near and dear. We wanted to keep doing that so we launched A Podcast for Everyone, with help from Rosenfeld Media, UIE, TPG, and O’Reilly. We plan to keep cranking out episodes every two weeks, indefinitely.
My work at TPG has been intense — in a good way. I started out doing technical reviews of websites, web applications, mobile sites and apps, desktop apps, even telephone services. With my TPG colleagues — the best accessibility mentors in the world (and who are, incidentally, located all over the world) — readily available in my Skype window, I learned a ton about the technical underpinnings of accessibility in digital products and services. I continue to learn new things from my colleagues every day. Today I learned about taps, swipes, and other touch events from Patrick Lauke.
The other focus of my work at TPG has been on building out a practice of Accessible User Experience. TPG has been doing user research activities for a long time, and when I came on board I was tasked with formalizing and building out those services. Fortunately, TPG hired David Sloan around the same time as they hired me. Dave worked for many years as a researcher, teacher, and consultant at the University of Dundee and is an expert the impact of accessibility on user experience. We’ve been reviewing mockups, wireframes, and prototypes to advise on accessibility implications at the design phase. We had several user research engagements, doing stakeholder interviews and usability studies. We have a series of Accessible User Experience training webinars that teach ways to bring accessibility into UX activities. We had a really interesting and challenging engagement creating a roadmap for integrating accessibility into the culture of a large multinational.
Overall, it’s a great time to be working in accessibility with a focus on user experience. Companies are becoming more aware that accessibility cannot be addressed after-the-fact and result in an acceptable outcome for anyone. The costs are high, for producer and consumer. I look forward to continuing work with my TPG colleagues and the accessibility and user experience communities to bring accessibility into user experience, so that products and services are accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
Sarah Horton 