The Challenges of Navigating With Disabled Folks

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There are five different categories of disabilities, and they're pretty wide ranging. We might have two people that are on the autism spectrum that there's no comparison between them because they have completely different needs. And so for me, that's part of why I've always thought and felt that accessibility is just part of user experience. Like it's not a set black and white thing. It's about people trying to get stuff done that happen to be using tools.

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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