Practical lessons and resources from working in visualization and accessibility
Frank Elavsky
What is design?
I am less certain than I was when I first started designing
Design is an uncertain practice
All design involves a spectrum of a priori uncertainty and decision-making
What does it mean to be a designer?
Community organizing helped me see the power of social action
Change is possible
There are many ways of knowing
(a great technical achievement)
And then I left and got a corporate job
(cvd)
(alt text)
126 accessibility criteria we had to pass
WCAG (or the web content accessibility guidelines) have 78 criteria
(> a quarter of all people)
(my limited focus)
(many more barriers exist)
My lack of knowledge had a tangible impact on who was included in visualization
My biases created priorities, and those excluded some people
Standards and guidelines
(Chartability's webpage)
Until we involved real users
Standards and guidelines set the floor of an experience
(the old)
(the old)
(improved)
Users teach us what a good experience is
Accessibility for some is a barrier to another
(chart textures can be a barrier for some!)
A single, static design simply cannot always be accessible for everyone.
"Access friction"
Access frictions challenge the notion of standardized access
I don't know what I don't know
I'm pretty certain I don't know a lot of things
Access frictions bring us back to uncertainty
Designing is a way of knowing
Design is an act of anticipation
patterns...
...can help us predict
Model-building is a conservative act.
the empty space
Is a better world always going to be built out of what we have already seen and done before?
"End-user design"?
"Softer materials"
cutting curbs