Designing and Developing for Accessibility

Part of the challenge of designing and creating amazing products is to make sure that they are inclusive of everyone. This means that as designers and developers, we need to learn to use the tools available to us to make applications more accessible for users affected by sight, hearing, movement and cognitive disabilities.

This month’s event focuses on how to break down the barriers that exclude people and ensure that we design and develop products that allow everyone to perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the web successfully. This is especially true in a time where the world is ever more reliant on technology, how do we, as makers, make sure that everyone is there for the ride.

We are excited to present this full day workshop as a collaboration between Women in Tech, LTUX,  Standard Bank Digital and the National Council for People with Disabilities. This workshop will give us hands-on experience and teach us how to start making the web more accessible.

In the workshop we’ll be re-designing and developing the Standard Bank mobile banking web app to understand and improve the applications accessibility. We’ll be conducting usability testing with people with different disabilities and implementing those changes by developing a more accessible banking prototype. In addition to learning about accessibility, design and software development, this workshop will also provide the ability to closely mimic the real world, whereby designers and developers are able to collaborate and learn from each other.

By the end of the day you will walk away having made a genuine impact, and hopefully learnt from one another about how to design and develop together for accessibility.

For developers:

As a developer you will benefit from this event by learning more about best practices on how to make applications that are accessible to people with disabilities. We will focus on  some html, css, code techniques and libraries that allow for exceptional usability and accessibility.
As a developer, we tend to alienate ourselves from ui and ux designers and we have a breakdown in communication as a result, this workshop will allow you to ask all the questions to designers that you’ve always wanted answers to, you’ll be able to see their thought processes and work with them to create impactful applications. We will also be using the ionic framework for this session, so you’ll be sure to pick up a thing or two about building hybrid mobile apps. You will be required to bring a laptop for this session and there will be some setup required beforehand that we will communicate with you beforehand.


For designers:

As designers, we design in the context of our reality and that of others like us, and we often forget that there are others that exist in the world a little differently.

During this workshop, will explore how we can diversify our thoughts and creations just by understanding the problems that need to be solved. We’ll go through a practical workshop where we Design, Test and Iterate towards a solution that is beneficial to more people than we started.

We’ll be partnering with developers to make things come to life. Learn how to communicate better with them and solve problems together. We’ll bring them along on our journey as designers but we’ll learn how to be present with them on theirs.

Come armed with your laptops, your hearts and your minds!


Schedule:
09:00 – 09:30 Arrival, tea and coffee and biscuits, fruit
09:30 – 09:45 Introduction by Inez & Ridhwana
09:45 – 09:50 Poetry by Daphne
09:50 – 10:20 NCPD on Universal Design
10:20 – 10:50 Nozi Nindi - Accessibility from a UI/UX designer
10:50 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 11:30 Jhani Coetzee  - Accessibility from a developer
11:30 – 13:30 Workshop Part 1 which  consists of requirements gathering, usability plans, and understanding the development framework.
13:30 – 14:30: Lunch
14:30 – 16:30 Workshop Part 2 which consists of creating low fidelity sketches, wireframing, application development, styling and completing the development of the prototype.
16:30 – 16:45: Break
16:45 – 17:45: Presentations
17:45 – 18:00: End

Please note lunch, snack and drinks will be provided.