Hello! I’ve moved here so you may need to update links, if you have been kind enough to provide them to the old site.
Things look a little different. For now, I am using a theme, called Cleanr, which I’ve modified quite a bit. I hope you like it. This is whilst I design something of my own. Some time soon, I hope.
Channel 4 News has put out a report today, talking about how people with learning disabilities are being excluded online.
It was a really good piece which showed some of the real-life problems many people with learning disabilities have accessing information online. The report gave some examples including how difficult it is to find a job or anything about voting online. (We are doing some work around this issue at United Response).
The piece ran at 12 noon and I really hope it makes it into more news programmes. You can watch the piece or read the article on their website
The best thing about it was that the report showed people with learning disabilities either using websites themselves or talking about the difficulties they face. Rather than someone else doing the talking for them.
The report featured people using assistive technologies at The Rix Centre and there was a great spokesperson from Mencap. I know the producer worked hard with lots of people, including United Response on this piece and guess what? I think we all said the same things.
It’s excellent that this has been highlighted in this way and I hope some good things come out of it.
On Monday, I went to The Rix Centre at the University of East London to join four other people to appear on a panel as part of the Inclusive New Media Design project.
The project has been working with web designers and developers to explore the best ways to encourage them to make websites which are accessible to people with intellectual disabilities.
Each person on the panel was asked to present on one practical thing the developers and designers could take away and do. My 5 mins was on Big is Beautiful, encouraging people to, well, make things big and maybe bigger than their comfort zone might want. This to help improve the user experience for people with learning disabilities and to prevent people from being locked out of information or indeed websites.
The other speakers were Jonathan Hassell, Head of Audience Experience and Usability at the BBC, freelance web accessibility consultant Ann McMeekin, Nick Weldin from Padington Arts and Simon Detheridge from Widgit Software.
It was a really good opportunity and a joy to present to the group.