Landing : Athabascau University

Accessibility Whack-A-Mole

http://alistapart.com/article/accessibility-whack-a-mole

A nice, detailed reflection on the complexities of creating one visual design for all people: tldr; it cannot be done. As the author, Eleanor Ratliff, puts it:

"There are lots of helpful accessibility guidelines in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, but although the W3C is working to better meet the complex needs of neurodiverse users, there are no easy solutions. How do we deal with accessibility needs for which there are no definitive answers? And what if a fix for one group of people breaks things for another group?"

Includes some particularly interesting observations on the importance of not just building with standards in mind, but of helping people to learn how they can change their systems to get a better personal experience, overriding inevitable compromises made by the designers.

Having made that point, the article presents a really nice case study on designing for a specific set of end users (people with dyslexia) which helps to both highlight the complexity and to inspire others to innovate and explore novel ways of thinking about accessibility.