I’ve just got back into the office from an enjoyable morning seminar on web accessibility hosted by Browsealoud. A big thanks to the team there for organising a great event which finished with a splendid buffet lunch!
I kicked off the proceedings with a presentation providing an overview of accessibility. After a quick true & false game (in which 2 of the 50 audience members claimed they got all 7 answers correct) I went through the key accessibility requirements for various user groups, including blind, partially sighted, motor impaired and cognitive impaired user groups. I also touched on the benefits of accessibility, the law and how to integrate accessibility into the development process.
You can download the presentation from our Slideshare page. I don’t tend to put too much info on to my slides (nothing worse than death by PowerPoint!) so if you weren’t there the slides may not make too much sense out of context.
Dave Barrett from BT did a great presentation with his usual level of passion and enthusiasm. He spoke about what BT have done and continue to do to bring inclusivity into all of BT’s digital products, especially their websites. Particularly of interest is the strides they’re taking to bring sign language on to the BT website. I’ve also uploaded (with Dave’s permission) the BT presentation on to our slideshare page.
One of the most enjoyable parts of these events is the networking and meeting a variety of interesting people. I met a lady from Middlesex University which has recently launched a Digital Inclusion Masters course, which I think is a pretty interesting and exciting development within the accessibility space.
As we roll into May we’re just 2 days away from the UK General Election, and this year’s election looks to be one of the most exciting in years. The Internet and digital is unsurprisingly more involved with helping us choose who to vote for than ever before - the newspapers are constantly talking about the best election Tweets and 
Games can no longer be dismissed as the sole preserve of teenagers. Gaming is now officially mainstream.
The Guardian had a clear chart with a line for each of the leaders. However, it only updated once every minute. This wasn’t frequent enough for it to enhance the live viewing experience. When Gordon Brown told Nick Clegg to ‘Get real’ I wanted to know straight away what the viewers thought about it. But, by the time the chart updated the debate had moved on.
Sky TV’s bar chart tried to show the breadth of opinions. For example, they didn’t just show the average rating for Nick Clegg. Instead Sky showed how far the ratings from most people ranged for Nick Clegg. So, the more the ratings differed the taller the yellow bar would be. This added a different dimension to how the ratings were displayed. However, it was a little more complicated and harder to interpret than the Guardian’s simple line chart. Also, the bar didn’t seem to move that much and you had to look carefully to notice any movement. Most of the time I wanted to look at the leaders themselves so I often missed changes in the ratings.
I wrote about this last week. It showed whether viewers felt positively or negatively towards what the leaders were saying. A single line went up or down in reaction to what the leaders were saying. There were 2 great things about this. Firstly, the line moved instantly in reaction to what was being said, giving immediate reactions. Secondly, the scale was set just right so that when viewers liked/disliked a leader’s comments the line rose/dropped markedly, these made the changes look and feel more dramatic. Out of the 3 displays ITV’s Worm was the best to watch.