Accessibility research at W4A: some conversations from the field

It’s always worth reflecting on the nature and impact of accessibility research that’s presented and discussed at W4A, beyond traditional academic measures of impact.

Last year, W4A 2015 in Florence took place right before the annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). I took advantage of this fortunate coincidence by recording a series of discussions with some of the researchers who attended the conference.

The recordings were packaged as a presentation “What’s Going On in the Accessibility Research World: Conversations from the Field”, given during ID24, a round-the-clock-series of 24 webinars on web accessibility. Now, as W4A 2016 begins, we’ve made the transcripts of these discussions available. They give you an insight into some of the research that W4A attendees are involved in, and the impact it may have on web accessibility more widely.

Thank you to everyone who contributed, including to Kevin Carey and Helen Petrie, whose discussions were recorded outside, but unfortunately the sound quality wasn’t good enough to include in the ID24 presentation.

There were four interviews:

1. Accessibility Research Answers New Questions, with Simon Harper and Markel Vigo.
2. Simplifying Accessibility Evaluation, with Chris Bailey.
3. Accessibility Influencing QA Processes, with Giorgio Brajnik.
4. Making Accessibility Meaningful and Achievable, with Vivienne Conway.