Ruth Ellison on user experience design, usability and accessibility
December 25th, 2005 — General
I’ve barely gotten used to the fact that it’s 2005….and it’s now Christmas Day, with 2006 peeking around the corner.
Some interesting Christmassy links:
And this is how Santa gets around Australia - on the back of a ute:
So have a very Merry Christmas/Festivus/< insert some non-denominational-politically-correctness-gone-mad phrase here >!
December 12th, 2005 — Accessibility
The call for review of the draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 was mentioned multiple times at last week’s OZeWAI conference.
All comments should be sent in by 21st December 2005.
December 11th, 2005 — Accessibility
I’m back from this year’s OZeWAI conference, held at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The focus of the conference is accessibility and adaptability of the web. The program included a range of speakers from various backgrounds, including (but not limited to):
Some of the key topics that stuck in my mind included adaptability (about adapting the web to the user rather than having the user adapt to the web), the different types of disabilities and accessibility testing. There were many more topics covered during the conference as can be seen by the program.
Vision impairment is one of the most talked about areas of accessibility, but it is important to keep in mind that there are other disabilities that we, as web designers, must design for. In regards to the other types of disabilities, cognitive disabilities are an area that still requires a lot more work. It can be one of the harder areas of disabilities to design for, due to lack of knowledge within this area, and also the diversity that’s within the “cognitive” category.
One of the best things about this conference is getting to meet other people who are also interested in this area of accessibility, and whom many are heavily involved in moving accessibility forward.
Many thanks to Liddy Nevile and her team for organising this conference. Thanks very much to Shane Anderson, his lovely wife, Rachelle and their gorgeous baby Ella, and Paul Bohman who, despite it being very out of their way, rescued me when I was stranded at the wrong Safeway in Melbourne (who would have thought that there were three Safeways in a row! And why is it called Safeway instead of Woolworths?). Despite all that hassle, we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Namaste Indian Restaurant.
My OZeWAI Flickr photos are now available. Here’s a quick preview:
December 4th, 2005 — Life
With all of the bad news about at the moment, this is a totally frivolous post about some of my clothes/accessories finds in Perth, while I’ve been out and about doing various chores for mum.
The first is Back in time, located in The Lakes Shopping Centre, at North Lake Road, South Lake, Western Australia. Don’t be deceived by the discount feel of the shopping centre. It hides this gem of a shop, which stocks beautiful designer clothing, handbags (my favourite Olga berg designer bags), jewellery, gifts etc. There’s such a range of interesting stuff. I could easily have spent more time there, but I had to get mum home to rest.
The other is Ice Accessories. There’s a few branches in Perth, but the one I’ve been to is Shop 45/425, in Perth Forrest Chase. It stocks the latest accessories at very cheap prices (about $5 upwards!). It mostly stocks costume jewellery, but there are some bags, a tiny selection of cheap scents, and various lip glosses etc. I first discovered this store on my last trip to Perth earlier this year.
The final is a clearance outlet named X Dream. It can be found at Shop 4 of the Concourse (Perth central train station, opposite Angus & Robertson bookstore). Lots of the latest fashions at cheap prices. It’s a pity that I don’t like the current gypsy look, else I would have gone nuts in there.
Of course there’s always Harbour Town (why don’t we have anything like this in Canberra?).
November 17th, 2005 — Life
I’ve just gotten back from Adelaide where I was running some usability sessions. We had some big issues with the testing environments, but overall the sessions went well.
Just popping through to say thank you to all of you for the good wishes for my mum. My sister has been posting photos of mum’s progress in hospital. It makes me sad seeing mum looking so helpless in the hospital bed.
No matter what kind of disagreements I’ve had with my parents in the past, I love them very much. I tend to think that parents are always strong and nothing will go wrong, so it’s a bit disconcerting and scary seeing a parent being scared and helpless.
I’m off to work today (as it’s past midnight), then Thredbo for a wedding where we (Raw Honey) will be singing, then back to Canberra on Saturday where I’ll be flying into Perth to be with mum for two weeks. I can’t wait to see mum!
November 14th, 2005 — Life
Got the good news tonight - mum is out of the operating theatre, and despite being in pain (which is expected), she is doing well! She will remain in the ICU overnight for monitoring, before being moved into a ward. Can’t wait to see her in a couple of days!
November 14th, 2005 — Wedding
For something that is four months away, the wedding date is starting to zoom up upon me. It started feeling more “real” on Saturday, when the very first invite was made up. After working in the web space for some time, switching to the print media was an interesting experience. The same design elements still apply - type of font, font size (unfortunately, there’s no way for the end user to control the font size ;) ), white spacing, line spacing…. I went through about eight drafts but I’m happy with the end result. The invites are simple with a nice metallic red background!
I managed to purchase the materials for my wedding dress yesterday. Who would have thought that the materials would have costed that much? When I was told the final price, you couldn’t have told on my calm (I think!) face that I was having a mild panic attack. I gulped, and then handed over my credit card. So I’m now the proud owner of seven metres of white satin, five and a half metres of white chiffon, and seven metres of lining, which will shortly be made up into a dress. A consoling thought is that I’m not spending thousands of dollars on a dress.
Mum is going in for her operation today at 6.30am Perth time. Wish I can be there when she comes out of the operating theatre, but at least I’ll be seeing her in six days when I fly back to Perth.
November 11th, 2005 — Web standards
Today was the very first Canberra WSG meeting, held at the National Library of Australia. We had a good turn out of people. Actually, I’m impressed with the number of people who showed up, considering that Friday afternoon tends to be happy hour for many people.
The speakers were Donna Maurer, who spoke about designing usable rich internet applications, and Dean Jackson, who spoke about the W3C. Donna’s presentation is available from her latest blog entry.
It’s always great having the opportunity to meet with fellow Canberrans who share a passion in the web standards/usability/accessibility field. Donna covered some interesting points about user expectations with rich internet applications. We’re still some time away until the state-like condition of this “newish” navigation model becomes more familiar to the user, but it’s definitely an interesting area to keep working away at.
As for Dean’s presentation, he asked some hairy questions about XHTML and HTML, and standards as a whole. He encouraged everyone to participate in reading the W3C specs, and providing feedback. On aside, I’m pretty keen on seeing his SVG demo ;)
Many thanks goes to Russ Weakley, Peter Firminger and Lisa Miller who drove up from Sydney to help us out with the first meeting. And many thanks of course to my fellow Canberra organisers, Michele Huston and Gavin Dispain.
Edit: Forgot to mention that WSG photos are available at Flickr, with more here and here!
