DesignDay meet-up at Bangalore – slides and resources

It was nice to be at July meet-up of DesignDay. Here is a recap of the event, my slides and as promised some resources!

What’s DesignDay?

DesignDay is a platform for designers to meet, discuss and solve problems together. The event started by introductions including name, what do they do, what can they offer to community and what would they been doing if not coming for DesignDay! Wow, within just about an hour, having about 20 participants, we were able to get ideas for 6 upcoming DesignDay topics, volunteers who could help in organizing. Also there was a huge list of what each one was doing if they were not at DesignDay and that include traveling, playing, sleeping, shopping etc., Thank you guys for sacrificing all that you generally do and for your commitment to DesignDay and enthusiasm to learn something.

Theme for this month is “Accessibility” and there were two talks delivered by another friend (his name is also Srini) and myself.

Srini talked about challenges that people with disabilities face on day-to-day basis with particular reference to persons with visual disability as he has first hand experience with our friend Raghavendra Satish Peri. He started off with an exercise asking people to stand facing towards the door, then he played a video where people could just hear the music. Then asked folks to come back and tell what did they watch until then? Some said it was a award ceremony and some said it was a dance! It was actually a magic show! He continued talking about inaccessibility of basic things like Coffee maker, medicines etc.,

Then I spoke about accessibility with reference to web sites and apps. Gave them a few exercises such as trying to search flights on a travel website without using track pad, exploring a movie site with a screen reader (turning off the monitor). Thank you guys for volunteering. Also, showed them hands-on Accessibility testing using WAVE by WebAIM. See below my slide deck and full text will follow in a few days!

As promised, here are some resources I was talking about:

• Read my articles related to Accessibility
• WAVE – an Accessibility evaluation tool by WebAIM
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• WAI – ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is the magic of making dynamic apps accessible to all users
• WAI- ARIA design patterns this is great examples of using ARIA
• WCAG 2.0 Checklist by WebAIM
• Color Contrast Analyzer(A tool to check for Color contrast)
• Some of my presentations
• YUI Accessibility blog archives
• Podcast and blog by my colleague Dennis L
• Accessibility blog by Rakesh Paladugula

Then there was a jam session where participants were divided into four groups and they were given two problems to solve:

1. Two groups working on to host a party at home for their friends who includes one person with visual disability, one hearing impaired, one motor disability
2. Two groups were working on arranging a fun event at office that is entertained to all their colleagues who includes 1 visually impaired, one hearing impaired, one person with motor disability and one with learning disability

Participants were expected to come up with top 5 challenges they face and possible solutions. They have come up with fantastic list of both problems and solutions and we should be writing some of them here in due course. Meanwhile, if you could think of these scenarios and have your list of problems and solutions, do write in here; would be great to hear from you all.

Overall, it was a great event. Looking forward to more!
Best,
Srinivasu