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Improving the Accessibility of Digital Courseware through UX Research

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Presented at 11:15 am in Mattie Silks on Wednesday, November 13, 2024.

#39520

Speaker(s)

  • Deanna Ferrante, Executive Accessibility Project Manager, Macmillan Learning

Session Details

  • Length of Session: 1-hr
  • Format: Lecture
  • Expertise Level: All Levels
  • Type of session: General Conference

Summary

Measuring the accessibility of your product transcends beyond compliance testing, it is important to directly engage with past, present, and potential customers with disabilities to understand their experience. The Macmillan Learning accessibility team has partnered with our internal UX team to design research plans to learn directly from students and instructors about how our digital courseware platform, Achieve, can best support the disability community.

Abstract

When you want to understand how a product is serving students with disabilities, ask them! Macmillan Learning’s accessibility team sought input from students with disabilities and instructors to learn more about how our digital courseware platform, Achieve, is meeting access needs. We not only want to ensure access but also want to optimize the usability of our platform. Working with our internal UX research team, we developed accessibility research plans to benchmark our accessibility progress from the perspective of our user population. Our pilot research provided invaluable feedback that helped us shape future research studies and improve the research experience for our participants. Developing our own research framework has helped us to create scalable and replicable survey and usability testing plans. During this session, you will learn practical tips for designing UX research plans and tangible findings about Achieve’s accessibility. Engaging the disability population in UX research may include extra planning, but it will ultimately leave your organization with more inclusive designs and research practices for all.

Keypoints

  1. How to design UX accessibility research plans that engage students with disabilities and instructors.
  2. Importance of piloting research plans with accessibility consultants/native assistive technology users.
  3. Macmillan Learning’s key research questions and findings about our digital courseware platform, Achieve.

Disability Areas

All Areas

Topic Areas

Accessible Course Design, Assistive Technology, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Deanna Ferrante

Deanna Ferrante is a CPACC-certified Executive Accessibility Project Manager at Macmillan Learning. She delivers outstanding support to students, instructors, and disability/accessibility services and leads UX research sessions that inform the design of inclusive digital courseware. Deanna also co-leads the company’s disability-focused employee resource group. Her background in disability inclusion spans higher education, nonprofit, and financial services sectors. Outside of work, Deanna facilitates a community group for neurodivergent individuals and teaches group exercise classes.

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