As technology consultants, we love to collaborate with other innovative organisations. Collaboration with people outside of Nimble allows us to share our knowledge and bring out the best ideas from different perspectives and skills. Our collaboration shows how working together, we can add more value than we can alone.
Raising Awareness of Accessibility In Technology
One crucial area where we’ve sought a like-minded collaborator is in elevating the conversation around accessibility. Why? Because with web services now a staple of everyday life, ensuring universal access is not just beneficial—it’s essential.
But designing and developing services to be truly accessible can be difficult, if not impossible, when accessibility isn’t considered from the beginning.
A Shared Vision with DMU
When we began our journey to bring accessibility into the everyday conversations of our work, we were thrilled to find that De Montfort University (DMU) shared our passion. DMU wanted to work with us to support our client’s projects becoming more accessible to everyone through their Discovery Lab.
From here, our Nimble Accessibility Network was born.
What is the DMU Discovery Lab?
Discovery Labs are a vital part of the accessibility journey. They test products using assistive technology that people with access needs might use, such as screen readers. As a part of this, the team may use personas or install accessibility testing toolkits.
They are also a space to test products with people who have different disabilities, giving us real-world feedback from users of our products.
This is where the DMU Discovery Lab can add even more value. They allow us to set up environments that include the specialist equipment and settings people use to navigate and interact with our applications. With this we can capture the feedback people provide us, which allows us to develop services that have a much greater level of accessibility, meaning even more people get to use our client’s products.
How can it help you?
It’s very common in the software development world to be confident you know exactly how your customers will interact with your product… right up to the moment they use it for the first time and do something completely unexpected that you never thought of.
They may even reach a stage in your journey that’s more challenging to navigate than you expected. For some users, this may not pose that big a problem. They might pinch-zoom a section to show some information that was hidden or they may find the infographic you added a little harder to read than you thought but still manage. For some users, a product may not work with their assistive technology at all, and so they cannot use it.
There are known implications of building technology which isn’t inclusive. Did you know the company Purple, an organisation who are working to bring disabled people and businesses together, released their Purple Pound infographic that estimated around £17.1 billion was lost by shoppers who clicked away from inaccessible websites.
With the DMU Discovery Lab, we look to find these problems during the design and development phases. This allows us to make changes and improve the accessibility of products before customers use them.
History of the collaboration
During our attendance at a design event in early 2023, DMU reached out to Nimble about their plans for a discovery lab. They shared with us their story about how in late 2022 they’d started plans to create their lab and how they’d begun the process of securing funding from the University. One of the points DMU was keen on was how best we could start our collaboration, and naturally, we were very excited at the idea.
From here, DMU began the process of training in the world of accessibility, acquiring the tools and space needed for the lab. This would help support all the needs we’d both have for a Discovery Lab in the best way possible for a community of users.
During this time, Nimble began shaping how this would support our client’s projects and started the process of hand-picking some of these clients to show off the great opportunities our discovery lab collaboration could offer them.
The Future of the collaboration (what can/will we offer)
Our goal with the DMU is to be able to offer our joint knowledge and support on accessibility throughout the entire project delivery journey, including:
- Research and product testing with users who have access needs
- Design and development with an ‘accessibility by default’ approach
- Testing of accessibility from a ‘light touch’ approach right through to the various WCAG standard levels (A-AAA)
Curious about the accessibility of your software or service? Reach out now to discover how together we can illuminate and improve your product’s accessibility. Let’s make inclusivity the standard, together.
Authors Bio
Brad Reaney is a Senior Consultant Test Engineer at Nimble.
With 8 years of experience in software testing and a passion for accessibility, he’s currently working towards his Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) to help add even more value to Nimble’s Accessibility Network.
