Week 6: Accessibility & User Experience

        We are drawing on a close to my Digital Writing course, as possibly as a result, this blog. I've enjoyed writing these posts. Some of the posts felt like I was reiterating my readings to a niche audience--generally my professor and some of my classmates. Some of my posts surprised me--the coalescing of my courses, previous knowledge, and special interests. In some respects, I hope I continue blogging--or at the very least, writing articles or opinion pieces on my various learnings and musings. As I've mentioned before, I've already committed myself to life-long learning.

        There are times when writing these posts felt meta--self-referential--in a way that was kind of unnatural. I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about my writing. My last post is on accessibility and the user experience. Accessibility is a fundamental part of user experience (UX). Fashioned after architecture, UXD has incorporated design thinking elements to enhance the user experience of web design, mobile apps, and other products. Without consideration of accessibility, a design could alienate and exclude an entire user base.

        With consideration to accessibility in my own blog, I've made an effort to add alt. text to every image I've used in my entries and in my logo. When choosing the colors, I remembered that stark contrast can cause eye fatigue so for the background I choose a white with a hint of color, and for the test, I choose a black that had less saturation. I used Google Fonts for the fonts, choosing both a serif for the headings and a sans-serif for the body of text. The variation of fonts adds visual interest, but I've read that sans-serif fonts are easier for individuals with learning disabilities to read. Also, Google Fonts are free and generally considered web accessible.

        I wish that I could have done more to improve the accessibility of my blog. I should have considered individuals who have colorblindness when choosing the colors--I don't know how that affects the accessibility of my blog in the context of their unique experiences.

        In the context of my experience with UX from my studies, I’ve previously mentioned that I used a theme designed by Sadaf F. K. and edited some of the HMTL to customize the look to my liking. By doing this I utilized a top-down approach, using a current design and editing it to suit my needs. UX favors a bottom-up approach to design, starting with early iterations that may consider the user’s journey or a user’s persona before even putting a design to the test. Another component of UX that I love and that I wish I could have written on more is the collaborative aspect of it. Just as Rheingold discusses the collaborative experience of writing in digital spaces—such as coauthorship of comments on blog posts or collaborative writings of wikis—UX depends on the collaboration of unique perspectives and experiences of designers, researchers, writers (and even users!) to create a design experience.

           While there is so much more I could have done for my blog, I want to nudge a gentle reminder for those who need it—done is better than perfect <3 

Best,

Kay

References:

Rheingold, H (2012). Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. Cambridge: The MIT Press.