Category Archives: Open & Inclusive SiG

Lead: Tim Coughlan

Assistive Technology and UX Accessibility – Open and Inclusive SIG

logoThank you to all who joined the Open and Inclusive Special Interest Group this December. We closed off the year with two wonderful speakers: Julie Eshleman and Beatriz Gonzalez. The talk focused on Assistive Technology and Designing for the Extremes on Wednesday December 1st.

First, we heard from Julie Eshleman, a PhD student at the University Sterling who discussed her amazing work with the Leonard Cheshire charity. We saw videos that showed first-hand how assistive technology is applied and the importance of it to the disabled community. Quoting Arthur C Clarke, Julie highlighted how ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and that assistive technology can be magical in the hands of those who need it most. If there was one thing the Covid-19 pandemic taught us, it is the importance of technology to our everyday lives. As companies and educators scrambled to provide tech to their workforces and students, we as a society came to realise how technology is the very basis of current civilisation. Yet for certain communities it can provide more than just a platform for connection, it can provide choice and freedom. Julie shared with the group how, in her PhD, she will look at how assistive technology interventions benefit users, and equally the consequences these changes in their lives can have.

Beatriz Gonzalez joined us from to discuss the importance of designing for further than the ‘average’. The first part of her talk highlighted how, throughout history, designs focused on an ‘average’ have failed in designing for the population. In fact, Beatriz says that ‘designing for the average person is designing for no-one’. With this in mind, should we be focusing not on designing for an average that doesn’t exist, but instead for the ‘extremes’ so we include everyone? By following the ‘POUR’ principles of accessibility, to make systems ‘Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust’ for all types of people. Tools which were shared to support our design thinking was the ‘d.school’ resource from the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.

The key message from this month’s Open and Inclusive Special Interest Group was that more needs to be done to ensure technology is designed for all. We, as designers and researchers, should ‘diversify our extremes’ and move away from ‘the binary’. This was best put in the final quote from the Leonard Cheshire Charity’s video shared by Julie Eshleman: ‘…but it is only the beginning’.

The Recording is available for OU Staff here: OU staff recording link

To join the open & Inclusive mailing list please email openTEL

open & Inclusive SIG: Presentations on Assistive Technology & UX Accessibility

logoJoin us for the next open & Inclusive SIG on Wednesday 1st December (14:00-16:00) where we will be joined by Julie Eshleman, talking about her work with Assistive Technology, and Beatriz Gonzalez Mellidez, presenting on UX accessibility work using personas and designing for extremes. More information below.

For an invite please contact openTEL. All are welcome!

Presentation 1

Title:
Technology for Adults in Care Settings – Finding What Works

Abstract:
The last two years have seen a dramatic increase in both mainstream and specialist technology purchases within social care – both to empower the workforce to conduct tasks more efficiently and as tools for disabled adults to stay connected with loved ones during a very difficult year. With this speed of technology integration, we have missed the opportunity to carefully understand what we are doing and why we are doing it – in our fixation to get technology in place, we have made technology the goal rather than the way to achieve goals. I am conducting research through the University of Stirling Continue reading open & Inclusive SIG: Presentations on Assistive Technology & UX Accessibility

Accessibility in the BBC – open & Inclusive SIG

Accessibility in the BBC, The open & Inclusive Special Interest Group
Wednesday 15th September 2021 (10:00 – 12:00)

Thank you to those who joined us for openTEL and SeGA’s open & Inclusive Special Interest Group meeting where we were joined by Jamie + Lion and Paul Bepey from the BBC, and Mathijs Lucassen from The Open University. The session was hosted by Kate Lister and Paco Iniesto.

Thank you, Kate!
Kicking off the meeting, Eileen Scanlon thanked Kate Lister for all her exceptional work within the Special Interest Group as this was Kate’s last meeting as co-host and SIG lead. Kate has been essential in growing the open & Inclusive SIG and providing interesting themes and excellent speakers. We hope she will stay in touch and attend future meetings when she can and openTEL looks forward to working with Kate in the future!

Presentations
Mathijs Lucassen gave a presentation from The Open University side: Getting BBC content into OU modules

Jamie + Lion gave a presentation on accessibility at the BBC relating to Audience Facing Digital Products and Paul Bepey gave a talk on accessibility relating to the Internal Facing side.

Jamie + Lion finished the meeting by presenting Charlie Turrell’s slides, who was unfortunately unable to attend the meeting, on the Champions Network.
More information here:
GDS/BBC Webinar: Accessibility Culture eats WCAG compliance for breakfast

Recording, Links and Slides
The Recording is available for OU Staff here: OU Staff Recording Link  

Slides: Getting BBC content into OU modules, Mathijs Lucassen.
Slides: Accessibility @ BBC, Audience Facing Digital Products Jamie + Lion
Slides: uploads to follow
GDS/BBC Webinar: Accessibility Culture eats WCAG compliance for breakfast

Podcast: Check out Jamie’s 1800 Seconds on Autism podcast.

To join the open & Inclusive mailing list please email openTEL

Accessibility in the BBC

 

For the most up to date information about this event, please see the updated blog post here:https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/opentel/accessibility-in-the-bbc-open-inclusive-sig/

 

Join us for the next Open & Inclusive Special Interest Group meeting where external speakers from the BBC will be discussing accessibility. All are welcome!

 

Accessibility in the BBC: open & Inclusive SIG, Wednesday 15th September 10:00 – 12:00

Presenters will include Jamie + Lion (you can read more about Jamie + Lion here) and Charlie Turrell (bio below).

Charlie Turrell

Charlie Turrell is the manager of the BBC’s Accessibility Champions network, encouraging this group to put accessibility at the front of any product they are working on. Charlie is currently setting up an additional external champions network to provide support for all people in a similar role and those who are wanting to set up networks in their own companies.

Additionally Charlie is on the board for BBC Pride and is passionate about pushing the constant improvement of culture and diversity in her organisation

We hope you can join us.
Please email openTEL for an invite.

How can Taylor help students with disabilities in Higher Education?

On Wednesday, July 21st, 35 people gathered online to learn more about ADMINS (Assistants to the disclosure and management of information about needs and support), a completed project funded by Microsoft and managed by the Institute of Educational Technology (IET) at The Open University (OU). The speaker of this seminar was Dr Tim Coughlan, a senior lecturer in IET, who was part of the research team leading the project. “But, who is Taylor?”– you may be wondering at this point if you are curious to know the answer to the question raised in the title of this post. Continue reading How can Taylor help students with disabilities in Higher Education?