A11y Camp 2024 23rd October.  Melbourne Exhibition Centre – Sketch Notes & Transcript

Sketch Notes Part 1

MC: Sarah Pulis.

Caricature of Sarah with short hair and glasses.

Acknowledgement of country – Wurundjeri lands. A small sketch of the skyline of Melbourne.

Our 9th A11y Camp. A hybrid event!

Technology is just one powerful part of the change!

Welcome address

Presenter: Rosemary Kayess.

Caricature of Rosemary with shoulder length wavy hair and a collared shirt.

We all need access to technology.

It’s part of our social fabric. Helping prevent isolation.

Human rights requirement.

Fast tracking inclusion in our society. Access to culture, health, education, and participation.

We all need to participate in accessibility regulatory reforms:

• Enforcement
• Duty requirements
• Disability Discrimination Act

The many faces of digital accessibility

Presenter: Adrian Roselli.

Caricature of Adrian with no hair and a collared shirt.

Don’t blame the user.  Drive change. Flying car with flames coming out of side engines.

Where will you be in your career in 5 years?

How should the interface function? Typography and icons: Don’t design things that look the same. Icon of a hand touching some buttons with a question mark.

Widgets are a great way to contribute to accessibility. Coffee cup surrounded by flames.

Burnout “we can’t afford to lose good people”. Sketch of a yellow warning sign with an explanation mark.

Beware the overlay fix.

In this industry we repeat things over and over. Testing prejudice. Challenge frameworks.

Lead by example. Finger pointing upwards.

Product owners. Project managers. Purchasers  – “Is the ACR a lie?”. Build penalties into the contract.

Normalise WCAG and accessibility in your organisation. WCAG can be very technical and barrier forming.

Sales opportunities: Selling accessibility aspect – “then the company has to do it!”.  Trainers that include accessible principles in everything you do! “Train the trainers”.

Early intervention in design:

Research brings insights other teams or designers don’t have. Always include as many people living with disability in your research as possible. Always looking at outcomes for your fellow humans.

Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.

Sketch Notes Part 2

Accessibility: The Diamond of the Season

Presenter: Maia Miller.

Caricature of Maia with curly hair and a crown of plant branches.

There are 900 invisible disabilities.

Communicate taking accessibility into account.

8% of men are colourblind – be aware of colour in communication.

Keyboard accessibility. Text spacing. Consistency.

Time outs for people with brain injuries.

Digital accessibility benefits everyone.

Design rebels: Rethinking the principles of design for better experiences

Presenter: Charlii Parker.

Caricature of Charli with blond hair and a jacket.

Learn directly from users!

Equitable design takes into account specific individual needs -“People in wheelchairs can perceive colour differently”.

Invisible design, “users don’t care about our technology”.

“Is it easy to use?”- Can they get in and do what they need with no friction?

Thought bubble saying, ‘financial disadvantage?’.

The best design is the one you don’t notice, it just works.

Creating Inclusive Spaces: Understanding the the Mental and Emotional Impacts of Alcohol and Drugs on Digital Experiences

Presenter: Ally Tutkaluk.

Caricature of Ally with shorter hair in a neat bob.

Connect Well: bridging the gap in service delivery. Mental health and AOD (Alcohol and other Drugs) support. Many of our clients face trauma. 80% of people with AOD challenges have faced trauma.

Trauma can make cognitive process and understanding difficult.

How can we design for easier digital interaction, “what if the user is drunk?”.

Be mindful of how to scoot people up and get them to the services they need. Man at a laptop holding his head “I don’t know my postcode!”.

Animations?

Touch target sizes?

Memory, Effective function, and Physical impacts.

There is research around substance abuse and functionality (older and newer digital accessibility research).

From the ground up: rebuilding ABC iview TV for all.

Presenters: Michelle Chu and Nick Stathakis.

Caricature of Michelle with shoulder length hair and a button short. Nick with luscious hair and glasses.

Accessibility is at the centre of what we do.

What to build, not just how.

Colour looks good on big and small screens.

Contrast? What’s the background? Colour blindness overlays in testing.

Custom templates: set the colour consistency and feel in functionality.

We compose and add code to improve menu focus aspects.

Navigation that’s not disorientating. Should always be consistent action and reaction.

‘Keep it simple!’, highlighted as a big sign.

Group relevant aspects together.

Build accessibility in from the beginning.

Often when building on top of existing architecture.

Empathy. A person in a wheelchair smiling.

Break silos, communicate with everybody for better results. Silos on a hill.

Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.

Sketch Notes Part 3

Ubiquitous Accessibility

Presenter: Greg Alchin.

Caricature of Greg with a white beard and glasses.

Inclusive by design, accessible by default.

Every customer can. The experience that satisfies all.

40% of adults have literacy challenges.

Ergonomics. Screen sizes? Dignity of independence. Changing demographics.

A hand holding a smartphone.

Accessibility is an enabling right. Voice control and activation control.

Design so blind users can have the same experience. Personalisation.

Think about it across the ecosystem. Text surrounded by bright yellow dots.

An arm with a smartwatch on it.  Heart rate movement health. Good pass keys.

Think about what you buy! Designing:

• Simplicity
• Perceivability
• Support personalisation
• Audit and test the experience for accessibility

Sketches of laptops and desktop computer.

A rules-based approach to designing accessible dark (and light) mode

Presenter: Donna Spencer.

Caricature of Donna with shoulder length hair.

LCH – making scales is the tricky bit!

It’s tedious but once it’s done you just plug it in – “and your designers love you! And developers”.

I like design – “I just don’t like making it good!”.

There are not many sites that work well in dark mode.

Dark and light adding doesn’t always work – “consider colour variation”.

Add semantic colours and neutrals. Designing so colours don’t smack you in the face!

How does your front end framework use colour?

From screen to speech: a screen reader journey

Presenter: Sarah Federman.

Caricature of Sarah with long hair.

I had to contextualise technology – “I used to only know the rules”.

Don’t use Aria unless you need to – “it is universal”.

Test in different browsers.

HTML – HTML AAM AccName  – web (Aria) a11y tree – core AAM – OS Ally tree.

Protecting and maintaining the accessibility tree. HTML and DOM generated. Sketch of a green tree.

Aria bridging the UI gap. Does the list of buttons function like a menu?

This is how you access the tree from within the web browser – “and inspect!”.

A false sense of accessibility: what automated tools are missing

Presenter: Beau Vass.

Caricature of Beau talking with a collared shirt.

Use ‘alt’ text description carefully.

The automation tool doesn’t know it’s wrong:

• Doesn’t reliably pick up colour contrast.
• Video and keyboard functionality.
• Where focus is being sent.
• Heading structure challenges.

Give it the tools to know it’s an image.

It can even tell you to do the wrong thing!

Automator tools – “How useful are they?”.

Change the narrative – “they have a low level of efficiency, let’s call it 10% to 15%!”.

Don’t rely too much.

Work on getting it right through research first!

Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.

Sketch Notes Part 4

Holding vendors accountable: designing your own vendor monitoring program

Presenter: Jaunita George.

Caricature of Jaunita with long hair and glasses.

Be reasonable and solutions orientated.

Committed to equal access financial services to all our members.

Team members: relationship manager, document manager, accessibility engineer.

Don’t look for one person to do everything – “they don’t exist!”.

Clear communication! Sketch of 2 checkboxes, with a matching tick mark in each.

Shadow teams and contacts theirs.

Build a vendor database. Compliance.

Email users and find out varification.

Always have testing. Smoke test.

Have a supplier code of conduct public facing doc. Shift costs to vendors to help you scale.

Don’t forget:

• Digital documents
• Emails and conference platforms
• Training for content and check it!

Procurement always needs help. Have a backup product ready!

Customer informed accessibility in the commbank up

Presenter: Allison Ravenhall.

Caricature of Allison with long hair.

The app collects information about what you do.

Honouring the settings the iPhone user has made! + Making large text support!

Breathing room and large text size. Sketch of a phone with the word ‘BIG!’ in very large letters on the screen.

We just made it work out of the box.

Quick links – we want you to go everywhere.

Keep it simple – “no secret handshakes”.

Users aren’t always aware of what their phones can do!

Test with users.

The power of change

Presenter: Donna Purcell.

Caricature of Donna with light long hair.

People with disability, like me, have unacceptable rates of employment.

I met with renowned companies all over the world.

Driving change, text highlighted by bright yellow dots.

Leadership:

• Leaders empathising curiously with circumstances of people living with disability.
• Some may have relatives or friends with disability.

Developing roles and training. Raising morale throughout the org. Can be life changing.

Recruitment and job customisation can be linked to business success – “raising productivity”. Text highlighted as a big sign.

What action can you take to drive change?

Commitment to building an inclusive workplace:

• Built in! Not as separate policy.
• Options for choice.
• The community is your customer.
• Look at the whole range of diversity at the design/discovery stage.
• Widespread company training.

Measuring monitoring and reporting.

So you know you’re making a change and where you can improve!

AI technology is a huge enabler, helping people with neurodiversity. Sketch of a small figure walking off a hand.

Co-pilot. Sketch of a robot.

Matching employees with abilities over a wide variety of roles.

We can all be change makers!

Sketch Group logo. Captured with Heart symbol on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land by @SketchGrp.