Accessibility and Usability: Working Together at MIT

Proposal No: 439

Bios & Handouts

Speaker(s)

• Katherine Wahl, Usability Consultant,
• Stephani Roberts, Web Accessibility Consultant, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Disability Area: Cognitive|Learning   Mobility   Vision   Deaf|HOH   Other Disability  

---

Topic Area: Legal   Best Practices   Web|Media Access   Alternate Format   Campus Policy   Curriculum Access   Assistive Technology   Information Resources  

---

Length of Session (in hours): 1

Format: Lecture

Expertise Level: All Levels

Type of session: General Conference

Summary of Session

A web accessibility consultant and a usability consultant from MIT will discuss the merger of their respective teams and the benefits of their collaboration. They will discuss the particulars of how they collaborate and share survey results on usability and accessibility in h

Abstract

The Usability and Accessibility teams in MIT`s IT department always worked closely together, but were formally merged during a department-wide reorganization in 2009. Our teams offered parallel services on projects ranging from institute-wide applications to Web sites for small student groups. The 2009 reorganization forced us to reevaluate our processes to deliver more comprehensive services. We needed to focus our efforts on providing products accessible to and usable by the widest possible audience, without diluting the separate practices. After two years, we have strengthened our ability to advocate persuasively for both usability and accessibility and have observed standards applied more consistently. We will discuss why we think the two practices belong together, how we collaborate, the benefits, the challenges, and what we think the future holds. We will be sharing survey information about usability and accessibility in higher education from our previous presentations. This information has not been shared publicly.

Kepoints

1. An understanding of how usability and accessibility can work together, while remaining distin
2. The steps they can take to blend these processes.
3. The importance of having a plan and long term vision for usability and accessibility that comes from leadership and top-level decision

Speaker Bio(s)

Katherine Wahl

Stephani Roberts

Stephani Roberts is an internal accessibility consultant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a primary technical resource on web accessibility and standards for the campus community, Stephani has worked for the last 9 years promoting web accessibility standards and universal design principles. She evaluates web projects from their initial design concepts to coded sites and enterprise wide applications. She has spent the last 15 years working in IT within academia, several start-ups, and as a front-end multi-media developer for WGBH. She has a BS in New Media and Film from Emerson College and is pursuing her M.Ed. in Ins

Handout(s)