Not only do you need to attract users to your gateway, you need to make sure they stick around. Overlooking usability and accessibility is like building a storefront with a moat and no signage. Enter at your peril!
This presentation brings to life the importance and key concepts of usability and accessibility. SGCI's resident usability expert Paul Parsons will share a set of common usability problems identified from helping more than 30 gateways improve their usability. In parallel, Hiram Kuykendall, Chief Technology Officer of MicroAssist, will reveal top accessibility violations that should matter to every federally funded gateway. Together, they show how you can take steps towards making your gateway meet both best practices and standards. You'll walk away knowing how to get started with bridging the moat and hoisting the welcome banners!
Participants will leave with new tools. For their own projects, participants can use Paul's paper "Common Usability Problems and Solutions for Science Gateways" to apply usability solutions that are easy for non-experts to implement. They'll also receive an accessibility checklist from Hiram, featuring concepts and resources that can help a gateway address top accessibility issues.
Two hours after the end of this session, Hiram will offer a
Learning Lab going more deeply into the accessibility evaluation resources available to gateways. Mark your calendar also for
SGCI's November 11 webinar featuring Hiram's review of the ways that gateways should be adapting to accessibility standards, with a specific focus on the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) as a model.
