Summary
What makes us human in human centered design? How can we optimize our workflows to respect our participants? Phil will talk through his experiences of creating inclusive research workflows which respect participants rights and agency and how they've managed to operationalize and scale them for hundreds of researchers around the world.
Key Insights
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One in five research participants will have an accessibility need, expanding beyond visible disabilities to situational and age-related impairments.
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Accessibility is fundamentally a design problem influenced by processes and tools, not just a technical checklist.
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Using mapping to visualize the participant journey helps define accessibility scope and encourage holistic thinking about user interactions.
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The WCAG 2.1 standard focuses on perception, operability, understanding, and robustness, highlighting diverse user interaction methods.
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Automated tools like Google's Lighthouse can expedite initial accessibility assessments but cannot replace real user testing.
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Multidisciplinary collaboration is key to addressing accessibility due to its technical, design, and communication challenges.
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Plain language and comprehension in consent forms are critical, given that 45% of UK adults read at or below level one literacy.
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Breaking down consent content into reusable modules reduces sign-off time and empowers non-experts to deploy compliant forms.
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Remote essential tools like digital whiteboards pose unique accessibility challenges that require content structuring and participant support solutions.
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Establishing regular dedicated time for accessibility fixes, such as 'Fix-it Fridays,' helps embed continuous improvement into workflows.
Notable Quotes
"One in five of those people will have an accessibility need of some kind."
"Accessibility in our workflows is really a design problem."
"The WCAG principles are perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust."
"Automated tools like Google's Lighthouse saved us days of manual testing and gave us a quick indication of where improvements were needed."
"Getting accessibility right is kind of caught up in our values and the potential systemic impact we can have."
"Nearly half of adults aged 16 to 65 in the UK read at a literacy level of one or below."
"The language in your consent forms doesn't have to be scary or complicated."
"Starting somewhere and finding a cadence for moving forward is often better than waiting for perfection."
"It was really fast to change issues like missing page headers once we understood how a screen reader experiences a website."
"We have something called Fix-it Fridays where we block out time to fix accessibility issues regularly."
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