Category: dai11y

I’m back, having got married, been on honeymoon, and perhaps inevitably, caught COVID. So, a little later than planned, please enjoy the latest issue of frequent11y!

Robles v. Domino’s Settles After Six Years of Litigation

This case concerns Guillermo Robles, a blind customer of Domino’s who was unable to order a custom pizza from their website or app, so sued them under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

I wrote about this case in my first ever issue of week11y, in October 2019. At the time, the US Supreme Court had just declined Domino’s appeal of a Ninth Circuit decision to overturn a district court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. (American law is complicated. Also, disclaimer: I’m no law expert).

Since then, in June 2021, the district court ruled in Robles’ favour, concluding that the website was not fully accessible and that a 45 minute wait on a telephone line was not a reasonable substitute. There’s lots of interesting information in the ADA Title III analysis of that ruling, such as Domino’s own expert not being able to place an order using a screen reader. There is also some distinction between Domino’s website and their mobile app, which are treated differently in law – the case was only allowed to continue regarding the app, rather than the website.

In what is believed to be a final end to the case, the parties have now settled out of court. The terms of that resolution are not (and may never be) known.

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Man Who Is Paralyzed Communicates By Imagining Handwriting

A man left quadriplegic after a freak accident has taken part in a study of a system called BrainGate2, developed at Stanford. The system relies on electrodes surgically implanted near the part of the brain that controls movement.

The man imagines writing individual characters by hand, and the computer learned to decode the distinct patterns with 95% accuracy. He can now type at a rate of 90 characters per minute.

I first covered this technology 2.5 years ago, in dai11y 25/11/2019. That system was developed at Chicago, and had a rate of around 66 characters per minute. So the technology is improving – which is fantastic. I just hope the surgically implanted hardware doesn’t go the way of the Second Sight implants and become unsupported.

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This 3D printed controller allows you to game with one hand

This Facebook video (3 minutes) demonstrates an attachment for a standard PlayStation controller, allowing you to access all of the buttons on the device using just one hand.

The attachment was designed and 3D-printed by Akaki Kuumeri and is quite fascinating to see in action! Designs are free to download and print, but Akaki also offers fully printed and assembled versions in their Etsy store. Both left-handed and right-handed versions are available. Akaki also designs attachments for other consoles such as Xbox Series X.

Whilst it’s disappointing not to see officially supported adapters from the console manufacturers themselves, I’m pleased to see creative solutions being devised in the community.

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New sensor technology helps blind and visually impaired pedestrians avoid hazards

Intelligent Material Solutions, Inc. have patented an “intelligent material” of rare earth crystals embedded in paint or thermoplastics. The crystals can be grown to any shape or size and exhibit unique emission and absorption spectra and tuneable energy conversions.

Paired with sensors mounted or integrated with a cane, users can use a smart device to gather geolocation feedback and receive enhanced situational awareness that is far more accurate than existing technologies such as GPS.

The technology is in its early stages but could be used to guide users to public transportation, retail entrances, pavement exits and other locations.

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Whisper’s hearing aids use AI to boost speech and reduce noise

Whisper is a startup that is developing hearing aids that self-tune over time, using AI. Traditional hearing aids require frequent adjustments, which can put people off wearing them. The CEO was inspired when his father asked to sit in a quiet corner of the café so that he could hear him properly, and he realised that he could make a difference in helping people connect better with their loved ones.

Two earpieces that take in and transmit sound are paired with a pocket-sized hub called Whisper Brain that wirelessly drives a sound separation engine. The engine’s algorithms, which were trained on a proprietary dataset, separate speech from noise in real time. Unlike traditional hearing aids, which amplify everything in a room, the engine hones in on particular sources

The system costs $139 per month at time of writing, which is less than the $179 originally quoted in the article (which was published in October 2020). Other companies are available – there are similar offerings from MicroTech, Widex and Starkey.

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Default focus outlines: Don’t remove them!

So many good tips in this article – though don’t be fooled by the title. This isn’t about the native browser focus styles; the participants in this podcast do advocate that it’s fine to provide your own custom focus styles. This is about removing any focus styles whatsoever, and why that’s a bad thing.

Many of us have come across this before: a designer insisting we remove the outline provided by browsers, but not providing their own focus style to replace it with. The analogies in this article are great:

• Focus styles are like streetlights. Even if you think they’re ugly – they’re extremely useful.
• Want to remove focus styles? How about removing all handles from your doors and windows, to avoid breaking the smooth flow of the design.

And some tips:

• Ask designers to try to navigate their own designs via keyboard only.
• Ask what the alternative for the native focus state should be. If the answer is that there shouldn’t be a focus state at all, then this discussion isn’t about the outline.

The article contains a podcast recording and a transcript. Worth a read/listen.

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Accessibility: The Biggest Scam in UX

Dot Tomczak draws us in with a clickbaity headline, and rants about designers that claim their work is accessible without being able to back it up.

Dot says that following a WCAG checklist isn’t enough – how many designers have actually included at least one person with a disability in their initial user research?

A nice looking, minimalist, high-contrast design isn’t necessarily an accessible one. As Dot points out, there is such a thing as too much contrast. Designs may break horribly when zoomed in, or may make no sense with assistive technologies. Fonts may be at least 16 pixels in size (good) but the font itself may not be very readable (bad).

Dot implores designers to start including people with impairments, in their user testing. To start using your favourite apps and websites with accessibility settings turned on, to get a feel of how things should work. To test their products with accessibility tools. And above all, to “stop bullshitting that you mastered it – no one did”.

The comments on the article are largely in full support and agreement – including a number of famous faces from the world of accessibility (whose own articles I’ve covered in previous issues of frequent11y!).

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Designing for Web Accessibility in 60 Seconds

UX Designer David Kennedy writes a short article with some useful quick wins for accessibility, focussed around asking questions.

• Is the content specific enough in important areas?
  • People skim when they read. Make sure your link text describes the content of the target link, and use concise headings to form the outline of the page.
• Where does the visual hierarchy put pressure on font sizes and colours?
  • Avoid small font sizes, low colour contrast, relying on colour alone to communicate state.
  • Also avoid confusing alignment, and excessive motion.
• What components are doing too much?
  • Consider avoiding autocomplete and tooltip components, in favour of simpler ones.
• Are all states communicated in an accessible way?
  • Pay careful attention to designs for your error states, disabled states, focus states, etc.

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Cabinet Office signs £400k deal for digital accessibility audits

To audit the accessibility of its digital services, the Cabinet Office has signed a two year deal with Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC) – a non-profit organisation based in Wales.

Adding context to the deal, which Civil Service World values at £436,632, the article states: “Research conducted over the past two years, and published by the CDDO in January, found that about 99% of public sector websites contained accessibility issues representing a potential problem for users with physical or cognitive impairments – as well as a possible breach of the new regulatory requirements.”

Side note: DAC are not to be confused with Deque (pronounced “dee queue”), a leading accessibility organisation that also does accessibility audits. Not knowing how the latter was pronounced, I must admit I mixed up the two when I heard colleagues talking about their accessibility audits, and only recently clarified it in a work chat!

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I’m Deaf And I Have ‘Perfect’ Speech. Here’s Why It’s Actually A Nightmare.

Rachel Zemach writes about some of the frustrating encounters she’s had, as someone who became Deaf at the age of 10 (and had already learned to speak). Her speech is indistinguishable from someone who is not deaf, and she can ‘lip read’, which is problematic, as we’ll discuss below.

Incidentally, I’d come across the term ‘Deaf’ (with a capital D) before, but wasn’t quite sure when it should be used. Rachel links to an article describing the difference, which essentially comes down to whether or not the subject sees their deafness as an identity; a community that shares a mutual culture and language. Hence Rachel “became Deaf” at the age of 10, and “someone who is not deaf” refers simply to the medical definition of hearing loss. But I digress…

Lip-reading is hard, and pretty inaccurate: “55% to 70% of English is not lip-readable because many sounds are made deep in the mouth or throat”. This makes Rachel’s encounters with waiters and the like all the more frustrating, when, upon realising Rachel can lip-read and speak, they push to communicate only in speech. This contrasts heavily with when Rachel is out with her Deaf friends, who can not or choose not to lip-read/speak, where waiters are far more willing to ‘pantomime’ gestures to communicate.

Rachel has concluded that she will try and avoid speaking in future. She finishes with a request:

If you’re a hearing person, please, when you meet someone who says they can’t hear you, take your cues from them. Do they want you to write what you have to say? Do they want you to take down your mask and speak slowly? Do they want you to pantomime? Deaf and hard-of-hearing people are the experts on how to communicate with them. Ask them openly and earnestly and respect their solutions, which they’ll undoubtedly have.

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