Designers speaking about success: Success via accessibility and usability #30
Erioldoesdesign
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Throughout the diary study period, a number of comments related to the accessibility of not just the OSS product but also the OSS contribution process in general. The designers seemed to have an awareness of when the OSS wasn’t meeting accessibility and usability standards, but only two designers worked specifically on contributions that improved the accessibility and usability of their chosen OSS. “We will not use tabbing as a method to navigate from the OSS cell to cell with a screen reader/keyboard. We implemented it, tried testing it, and got feedback that it was not preferred”. We can see a more direct correlation to the goals of accessibility as a design ‘task’ and the process it took through implementation and testing with users to ascertain success, or not.
Another spoke about success only being obtained once all accessibility goals detailed in an audit document were resolved. “We have set accessibility goals for the project, once we meet all of them, we can say the project was successful”.
Other comments made by designers were more about their approach to practicing design and noticing these moments when accessibility and usability were missing. “To test the OSS product, we had to download the software. It is not downloadable by everyone yet”. This comment demonstrates how certain users are excluded when specific operating system versions are not available to them, for example an OSS may have a version that works on android devices but not on apple devices.
In a general sense, designers try to encapsulate the voices of the users, which is inclusive of their accessibility and usability struggles. “I generally try to be the voice of the user”. When tasks related to accessibility and usability are not explicit we do see accessibility and usability being passed over and not explicitly addressed by the designers or OSS in favor of other, more important or time critical work. This is not surprising given the evidence we have of designers consistently stating they do not have enough time to address tasks in the way they would want to address them and that they struggle to communicate design motivations.
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