How we became accidental accessibility champions, and how you could too!

About this Tutorial

We will start the session with an introduction into inclusive design. We will be exploring varying accessibility personas such as motor impairments like arthritis, visual loss or colour blindness and cognitive examples of dyslexia or autism.

We'll then move into our case study, what we have learnt in our accessibility journey at Auto Trader, how we challenged the 'norm' and in doing so, helped bring about change that's lead - indirectly - to the creation of a core pattern library; fledgling accessibility testing to new projects; a new careers site designed, built and audited to WCAG 2.0 AA, as well as running awareness workshops: all to ensure accessibility is at the core of design and development across all of Auto Trader.

Finally, we will invite workshop attendees to participate in some live accessibility testing. Users will be grouped to various impairments (motor/visual/cognitive), with the aim for them to complete tasks and in doing so empathise will real world users.

About the Speakers

Chris Gibbons

Chris is an experienced digital developer specialising in front-end development, with a mild obsession for well written and clean code. After working with the amazing guys at Code Computerlove for 7.5 years, working his way up to senior front-end developer, Chris then spent the next 12 months working as a UI engineer at Zuto, where he enjoyed the challenge of trying to build a bridge between front-end and UX.

He now spends his time employed by the nice folk at Auto Trader helping to build market-leading retailer tools by working closely with UX and design. He and Anya are the core drivers behind the company-wide accessibility and inclusive design initiative.

Chris lives close to the seaside resort of Blackpool and in his spare time likes to take photographs, bake and support Liverpool FC.

He's a dabbler in HTML5, CSS3, JS; tinkerer of mobile first and RWD; drinker of coffee; maker of cakes; not necessarily in that order.

 _gbbns

Anya Braun

Anya is a user experience researcher for Auto Trader with a fascination for psychology, simplicity and delight. A keen interest in fine art and all things digital led Anya to complete her degree in computing with a focus on UX.

After successfully completing the graduate scheme over 3 years ago at Auto Trader, she has explored coding and UX design. She is now driving forward the research needs of the company, with primary responsibility for the user experience of Auto Trader’s car dealer software applications.

An ongoing passion for usability and accessibility that stems from her dissertation is what currently motivates the accessibility campaign that she and Chris are leading across the whole of Auto Trader.

 ux_lady