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Universal Design for Web Accessibility

Solutions for barrier-free user experiences

Universal Design for Web Accessibility

A book in progress by Whitney Quesenbery & Sarah Horton. Publisher: Rosenfeld Media. Anticipated publication date: 2012

If you are in charge of the design, user experience, or strategy for a web site, this book can help you make the site accessible without sacrificing design or innovation. It focuses on solutions: practical principles and examples of how to create sites that everyone can use.

Why is this important? It's simple: laws in the US and around the world are changing accessibility from a "nice-to-have" feature to a legal requirement. Like architects in the built environment, user experience professionals are becoming accountable for providing exceptional user experiences that are also accessible. Just as with user research and coding to standards, accessibility will soon be simply part of the profession.

Universal Design for Web Accessibility starts with the principles of universal design and takes a holistic, design-oriented approach, providing user experience professionals with elegant and practical solutions to universal access.

“Universal Design for Web Accessibility” Blog

Help create a US strategic plan for accessibility

Posted by Whitney Quesenbery on March 19, 2012 | Comments (0)

Crowdsourcing is all the rage, even in government UX work. Two projects going on right now invite you -- yes, you -- to contribute your ideas for making our world more accessible:



OpenIDEO is a collaborative innovation platform that invites creative thinkers to work together to solve social problems. In the elections challenge, we're down to the final days: evaluations of a shortlist of 20 final concepts. This challenge is part of the EAC-funded Accessible Voting Technology Initiative. Winners will be announced on March 28. 

With the Section 508 Refresh is nearing the end of a long regulatory process (we submitted the final report of the Advisory Commitee in April 2008), The National Dialogue is a chance for the public to provide input on how to manage a strategic accessibility program. 

You don't have to work in government to have input. Share what's worked in your own UX, usability or accessibility program -- or your ideas for fixing what didn't work.

Cool (and accessible) gadgets

Posted by Whitney Quesenbery on July 5, 2011

One of the basic premises of universal design is that design can have accessibility built right in, giving you both good design and good accessibility. And there are lots of examples out there of features or products that started out as assistive technologies, but work for everyone (think curb cuts, OXO good grips, and text-to-speech).

But we don't often think about just how a cool gadget can be just the thing to solve a need for people with disabilities. In fact, we don't usually think of assistive technology as cool at all.

The Enabled blog, run by a group of social entrepreneurs in India, has compiled a list of 10 gadgets that turn out to be great technology for people with disabilities.

My favorites are:

  • MyTobiiP10, a gaze controlled computer from the makers of one of the popular eyetracking systems for usability testing
  • Panasonic's combo washer-dryer
  • A walking stick that vibrates when you get too close to something
  • and, of course the iPad
Read the rest of the list at Enabled:  Top 10 tech gadgets for persons with disabilities


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