Sigrun Lurås, Halogen AS, NORWAY

Email: sigrun.luras@halogen.no

Morten Tollefsen, MediaLT, NORWAY

Email: morten@medialt.no

Intended audience

Both practitioners and researchers. The tutorial is suitable for anybody with an interest in universal web accessibility.

Tutorial goal

The main goal of the tutorial is to show how a participatory design approach can be used to achieve universal web accessibility. The tutorial combines a theoretical introduction to accessibility and participatory design with practical experiences of how it is to use Internet for different kind of disabled users. The intention is to give the participants a practical understanding of the context of use for people with disabilities. This way the participants will get an enhanced understanding of a wider range of potential users, and a good basis for develpoing more user-friendly solutions for all.

Tutorial outline

• Introduction

• Theoretical introduction to participatory design and universal web accessibility

• Demonstration of the context of use of a user with special needs (including demonstration of Jaws, a screen reader for blind users)

• Practical part where the participants will experience a selection of disabled users' context of use e.g. blind users, partly sighted users and users with motor skill impairments

• Group exercises

• Plenary presentations and discussion

Intructors

Morten Tollefsen has a Cand. Scient degree in computer science. He has been a researcher at the University of Oslo/Kjeller (Unik), and is one of the two founders of MediaLT. Tollefsen has worked with Internet and accessibility for 20 years. He has worked with the accessibility of commercial and public web sites for organizations like Telenor, Orkla, Hydro, the University of Oslo and others, and was involved in the development of the accessible information system at the Paralympics, Salt Lake City. Tollefsen takes part in several Norwegian and international research and development projects.

Sigrun Lurås has a Master of Technology degree in Industrial Design Engineering, specializing in interaction design and user-centered design. During her studies Lurås has completed several interaction design projects for Statoil and others. Since she started as an information architect in the consulting firm Halogen, she has worked on web projects with a special emphasis on accessibility.

For more information on MediaLT and Halogen, see:

www.medialt.no/?pageId=12