Since leav­ing my UX job of twen­ty years, I felt it was time to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty what I’ve learnt. So I built a course.

Yes, I know. Everyone’s build­ing cours­es. But I think this speaks to some­thing: a desire for com­mu­ni­ty. And I don’t think I’m alone in crav­ing that.

A healthy land­scape where we are able to cham­pi­on our line of work, encour­age and build oth­ers up to do the best we can, isn’t just about mak­ing mon­ey. It’s about doing what we love for the peo­ple we love, and mak­ing a liv­ing as a bonus.

Why an online course? 

It was not a hard deci­sion to realise this was what I want­ed to do. I’m hop­ing to be able to work with indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies in-per­son. And if you would like to do this, please let me know!

An online course, though, is able to tran­scend that. Allow­ing peo­ple to work at their own pace, on a plat­form that can be con­tin­u­al­ly improved just seems like a no-brain­er. There are so many advan­tages to hav­ing it online:

• Avail­able any­where, any time.
• No time restrictions.
• Can evolve with the times.

Why acces­si­bil­i­ty?

I know this is a well-cov­ered top­ic, but my impres­sion of it is sim­i­lar to many: it’s usu­al­ly pre­sent­ed as pret­ty dry. When­ev­er the top­ic of acces­si­bil­i­ty is brought up, eyes glaze over, and the feel­ing that this is anoth­er box-tick­ing exer­cise or a nec­es­sary evil creeps in.

I want to help change that. My expe­ri­ence is a com­bi­na­tion of engi­neer­ing (mechan­i­cal!) and UX design. I love struc­ture and aes­thet­ics. And I think that, rather than an add-on, acces­si­bil­i­ty is a crit­i­cal ingre­di­ent. It moves us out of what we’re build­ing and encour­ages us to look at who we’re build­ing for.

Why now?

Every­thing seems to be chang­ing right now. A per­fect storm of an AI takeover and new laws demand­ing acces­si­ble prod­ucts. As builders of the web, there’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change what we do. Teams are being restruc­tured, and a lot of peo­ple are going out on their own. But one thing hasn’t changed: the need for prod­ucts that are usable by everyone.

So it’s both some­thing that’s need­ed now and some­thing that’s always been needed.

What’s in the course? 

The course itself, enti­tled ​“Fun­da­men­tal­ly Acces­si­ble” is a fly­by overview of acces­si­bil­i­ty and dig­i­tal prod­ucts, cov­er­ing the start-to-fin­ish process of build­ing a product:

• The busi­ness case
• Design
• Devel­op­ment
• Test­ing and practices

It describes the land­scape we’re in cur­rent­ly. The users that might be miss­ing out on our prod­ucts and the oppor­tu­ni­ties to change our work­flows to incor­po­rate acces­si­bil­i­ty more deeply into our processes.

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s about encour­ag­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty cham­pi­ons with­in our work and organisations.

What’s it like? 

The course is a series of lessons, both in video and arti­cle form, in four mod­ules. There are no quizzes or exams. It’s designed to help you under­stand rather than just be anoth­er notch on your belt.

If you do decide to give it a go, I would love to hear your thoughts.

DFH Course: Fundamentally Accessible