[nfbcs] Question About Accessibility of Design/Mockup/Wire Framing Tools

[Cindy Bennett]

Hi,

My name is Cindy, and I just joined the list.

I am starting a Ph.D. program in Human Centered Design at the
University of Washington in a couple of weeks and am brainstorming
what I want to research this year.

Currently, I am interested in the state of design and mockup tools,
and whether they provide adequate options to educate designers about
features they can include to make their prototypes accessible, to
hopefully encourage the ultimate design to be accessible.

I know this is a CS list and not a designers list. I am very new to cs
as my background is in psychology. But I am curious if any of you have
successfully worked with a design or mockup tool, sometimes referred
to as wire framing tools, etc.

I am interested in downloading some and checking them out. I have
heard of Axure and Balsamiq and just downloaded a free and open source
tool called Pencil. At first glance, it doesn't seem to be that
accessible, but I know that some experimenting could reap some
results.

I know that many design tools are inherently visual, and that may play
to a lack of accessibility, but I wanted to poll some people who
probably know a few things to see if you have any advice for me.

I am not just interested in finding a moderately accessible design
tool to work with myself, but in evaluating tools to learn what types
of accessibility options they give designers. I will be conducting a
research project where students in a design class will have to
evaluate such aspects of a few design tools of their choice, and I
plan on analyzing the qualitative data, but I would like to be as
involved as I possibly can.

If you have advice of other venues on which I can ask questions, or
places that have pretty good documentation of accessibility of various
programs (I have found documentation somewhat lacking so far) that
would be great!

Thanks so much for any feedback you can provide! I am looking forward
to starting coding (another topic in itself).

Cindy



-- 
Cindy Bennett
Graduate Student, University of Washington
Human Centered Design and Engineering

Treasurer of the Greater Seattle Chapter and of the National
Federation of the Blind of Washington
Affiliates of the National Federation of the Blind

clb5590 at gmail.com