Accessible Web Design for the Self-Taught Content Creator | Chloe Typert-Morrison

Foreword

Hello and welcome to my exhibit on accessible web design for the self-taught content creator. Before we continue through this project journey, I would like to note that this exhibit has been written in plain language wherever possible and all industry-specific terminologies will have a glossary definition when clicked. This exhibit is meant for everyone, regardless of web accessibility knowledge.

This exhibit uses the social model to frame disability. The International Association of Accessibility Professionals (2020) explains that the social model sees disability as “a socially created problem” (p. 7) where disability is not a trait of individuals but something society creates through inaccessible designs. This model removes the onus of finding accessible workarounds from the people who are experiencing the created disability and places it onto the person who is creating the product, experience or environment (p. 7). By helping the people who are creating web content make their work accessible, the onus can be placed on them to ensure that their websites are accessible to everyone.

Introduction

Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Chloe Typert-Morrison. For the past year, I have been focused on the question of how to bring Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to the general public. Though these guidelines are becoming more well-known, they are still generally developed for and promoted to web designers, developers and accessibility tool creators. Now that anyone with an internet connection can create web content, it is prudent that we shift our focus to ensure that these creators understand the purpose of accessibility guidelines and how to apply them to their own content.

In my exhibit, I explore the potential ways that the WCAG can be broken down and reformatted for the everyday person. I have also designed one of the possible products that may come from my MRP where I will be co-designing with self-taught web content creators to help them integrate accessibility practices into their content creation process. This exhibit displays a redesigned Squarespace interface that integrates checking for accessibility compliance into each design aspect. The redesign also includes explanations for each one of these elements to help the person working with it understand what they need to do to make something accessible and why it is important. This tool kit is something that could be promoted to existing content management systems to help them blend accessible design practices into the websites created using their platforms.

I hope this exhibition may help you think about how accessible the content you create is and, possibly, learn a few things too. Thank you for watching and I hope that you enjoy our exhibition.

Explore the Project

Read the Outline of the Problem 〉

Explore the Redesigned Interface 〉

Browse the References for this Exhibit 〉

Read All Glossary Definitions from this Exhibit 〉

About Chloe