Ergonomics and Accessibility

Description

Accessibility is still an afterthought in a lot of projects. Something you “fix” later. It is seen as “the job of the developers”. But accessibility is the responsibility of the whole team. Including designers. And a lot of accessibility issues can be already foreseen and prevented during the design phase. In this course, students will learn how to design better, more accessible products. Using interface examples, I will cover the most important accessibility problems that can be prevented in the design phase: color usage, keyboard navigation and interaction states, layout, wayfinding (navigation), titles and headings, links, multimedia content (like images) and more. This knowledge can also be applied to auditing designs for accessibility issues. Finally, I will teach students how to document accessibility and user interaction requirements to help the developer team implement them.

Compétences visées

At the end of this course, students should be able to :

 ● Explain what accessibility is

 ● Understand different disabilities and how they might impact someone’s experience with a website

 ● Identify what accessibility issues can be avoided during the design phase and offer design solutions to improve the mockups for accessibility (we will be using Figma for that) ● Audit a site to identify main design accessibility issues (this does not cover code issues) (we will be using Figma for that)

● Offer design some solutions and alternatives to those issues, to improve the accessibility of existing products 

● Document accessibility best practices in the mockups and interactions guidelines to help the development team technically implement the product 

● Build better communication around accessibility with the whole team