Supporting Awareness of Visual Impairments and Accessibility Reflections through Video Demos and Design Cards

Abstract

Disabled people's experiences and knowledge are oftentimes not central in design processes. Further, the burden of outreach and sensitising others to these experiences and knowledge is frequently not recognised. This paper offers a workshop approach for including disabled people in the early stages of design and supporting accessibility awareness among non-disabled design practitioners. Our approach and associated tools-designed to help support this deeper participatory work-bring together users, researchers and design specialists with different visual abilities (blind, partially sighted and sighted). We describe how these groups were engaged with video demos and reflective design cards for prompting conversations about technology, accessibility, and visual impairments (VI). Eight online workshops were conducted with 17 participants (2-3 participants per session) and found varied types of interactions between them. Overall, the approach and tools enabled participants to learn about, share, and reflect on how technologies are used by visually impaired people (VIP). CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Accessibility design and evaluation methods; Collaborative and social computing design and evaluation methods.