The Ironman's Origin Story

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The only Ironman I've finished is the one starring Robert Downey Jr. Derek was born with a club foot, which means that my left leg was facing straight but my left foot was basically pointing and hooked in towards my right foot. He used to have to wear these shoes that turned his feet out and had a metal bar between them so that he could get his foot pointing outwards since it was naturally kind of hooked inwards.

Derek Featherstone teaches us how designing for people with disabilities is really just better design for everybody. He shows us how people with disabilities aren’t different from us, they just use different tools to accomplish the same things. He encourages us to apply empathy to grow our skills in learning how to design for accessibility. He also reveals how taking small steps to incorporate something new into our design process could change everything.

Origin Story (5:53)
What Were Your “Aha” Moments? (12:02)
Why Do We Tend to Forget About Disabled Users? (17:15)
Tools Disabled Folks Use to Navigate (20:47)
Accessibility, Greater Than Aesthetics (31:37)
Has Designing for Accessibility Ever Made Things Worse for Majority of “Able” Users? (36:14)
Story of Biggest Triumph in Designing for Inclusivity + Accessibility (42:36)
What’s a Roadmap for Learning this Stuff? (44:56)
Contact Info (47:35)

Check out the detailed show notes and Eli Jorgensen’s astonishing superhero artwork at userdefenders.com/051

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