A project about radical empathy
I took part in the Deen Developer’s Hackathon this weekend, intending to create a solution for a problem that exists in the deaf and blind community. The main focus was to ensure an app was inclusive by not leaving accessibility as an afterthought. We spoke to Deafblind UK to understand more about how people with sensory loss face obstacles carrying out day to day tasks and how technology with little accessibility can make those easy tasks a chore.
The problem statement and solution
A huge majority of people with sensory loss and those that care for them do not know what places and activities are accessible for their needs, this includes restaurants, stores and gyms.
To combat this problem, we decided to create ‘Access My City’, an app that allows users to find places around them with good accessibility.
My role in the team was UX/UI designer and I was working alongside one other designer, two developers and a project manager.
Understanding the user
The initial phase was to consider how a user with partial or total blindness would go about getting from venues A to B and what they usually have to consider in terms of accessibility at the venue. We interviewed Deafblind UK, who work with people with sensory loss, to gain a better insight into the limitations faced when using digital services. By having meaningful conversations with them, we could empathise and create a user persona.
From the interviews I gathered three main points; blindness could be a temporary or permanent disability, a screen reader is an essential feature for navigating on digital devices and the main goal of the user was to promote independence.
A common misconception is blindness is an ‘all-or-nothing’ condition but only 15% of those who are blind fall into the ‘totally blind’ category. Users with partial vision still struggle to use apps without tools…
