Reflection

The project was interesting and challenging for me in terms of both exploring a whole new world of designing for people with different impairments, and utilising those fundamentals to maximise usability while keeping the design aesthetically pleasing.

I chose dyslexia as it is such a common impairment worldwide yet the only sufferers I openly know are schoolchildren. Adults in the main quite obviously don’t publicise if they are affected by dyslexia and for this reason it was important that any design decisions needed to be inclusive for all users and not to favour any one user over another.

I found it interesting that many of the fundamentals of accessibility and inclusive design are simply good design practice regardless of who the user might be. In this regard I feel the design has positively addressed some of these issues – from a user with severe dyslexia needing to adjust fonts and contrast settings, to a typically normal reader struggling to read text in the sunshine. In addition, text and colour customisation is achieved in less than the 6 steps identified in the ‘to-be’ task analysis.

Typically a project like this would, from the outset and at different stages throughout, involve a significant deal of usability testing and other research methods to validate designs and subsequent iterations. The focus here though has been on visual design and accessibility with primary research mostly beyond the scope of the project due to time constraints, and therefore a great deal of potential data has been omitted.

I did however manage to conduct brief user tests at the wireframe stage, and, although not from dyslexic users, the data and feedback did inform iterations for the final prototype.

Further work would include an accessibility evaluation and usability testing with dyslexic users. As well as for ethical concerns as the only dyslexic people I know of are schoolchildren who would unlikely use an app such as this, I would endeavour to arrange testing with adult members of the Dyslexia Association of Ireland and the British Dyslexia Association…

References

Artefacts from the project including prototype files can be accessed here.

Bibliography

Bigelow, & Holmes. (2014). Typography & Dyslexia. Retrieved December 6, 2019, from Bigelow & Holmes website: https://bigelowandholmes.typepad.com/bigelow-holmes/2014/11/typography-dyslexia.html

British Dyslexia Association. (2018). Dyslexia friendly style guide. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from British Dyslexia Association website: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide

Cavedoni, A. (2015). Introducing the New System Fonts—WWDC 2015—Videos. Retrieved December 11, 2019, from Apple Developer website: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2015/804/

Redka, M. (2019, April 5). UI/UX Design for Users with Dyslexia. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from InstantShift—Web Designers and Developers Daily Resource. website: http://www.instantshift.com/2019/04/05/ui-ux-design-for-dyslexia-users/

Rello, L., & Baeza-Yates, R. (2013, October 21). Good fonts for dyslexia. Presented at the Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, ASSETS 2013. https://doi.org/10.1145/2513383.2513447

Rello, L., & Baeza-Yates, R. (n.d.). Optimal Colors to Improve Readability for People with Dyslexia—Text Customization for Readability Online Symposium. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/r11

Rello, L., & Barbosa, S. (2013). Do People with Dyslexia Need Special Reading Software?

Schneps, M. H., Thomson, J. M., Chen, C., Sonnert, G., & Pomplun, M. (2013). E-Readers Are More Effective than Paper for Some with Dyslexia. PLOS ONE, 8(9), e75634. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0075634

Staff, C. (2015, July 28). San Francisco Font—Maximum Readability And Clarity | C1. Retrieved November 19, 2019, from Convergent1 website: https://www.convergent1.com/san-francisco-font-maximum-readability-and-clarity/

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. (2018). Retrieved November 4, 2019, from https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/

Zusman, A. (2015). Designing for Dyslexia, Part 2 | UX Booth. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/designing-for-dyslexia-part-2/