Usability and Accessibility Certificate Program at 2008 Conference

In this year’s pre-conference program, Whitney Quesenbery is running a certificate program that should catch the attention of any technical communicator interested in usability and accessibility. Anyone attending will definitely learn from this very, very knowledgeable member of – among other groups – the STC’s AccessAbility SIG and Usability and User Experience SIG.

Whitney comments about usability and accessibility in technical communication:

I was the UPA representative to the Access Board advisory committee (TEITAC) working on making recommendations for updates to Section 508. The committee worked to harmonize with the draft W3CWAI WCAG 2.0. As someone concerned with technical communication, I consider plain language not only usable communication, but a way to help make information accessible to people with reading, language or other cognitive disabilities.

So what can you expect from this program? Whitney replies:

I’ll be focusing on “low impact” (easy to do, low cost) techniques that you can build into your own process, no matter how little time or budget you have available (but we’ll also get a glimpse of some more advanced tools like Morae).

I hope that participants will leave with a good overview of usability and accessibility, some techniques they can put to use immediately, practical experience doing usability testing and accessibility reviews, and have some experience with simple (and free) tools like the WAT toolbar and JUICY contrast analyzer.

Oh – and of special interest to AccessAbility SIG members, the unit on working with usability participants will also include some tips on working with people with disabilities in a test situation (with special reference to Shawn Henry’s book Just Ask).

Last, but not least:

One of the nice things about a training workshop at STC is that you are working with colleagues who work on similar projects.

The certificate program description

Whether you are just learning about usability, or want to build your skills, this workshop will blend a strong focus on usability and accessibility concepts with practical exercises to learn how to put them to use. We will start with an overview of a user-centered process, looking at how we achieve the goals usability and accessibility, and what questions we need to answer along the way. Then, we will look at some of the most popular techniques for learning about and from users. Whether you work on product documentation, web sites, software applications, hardware products or a mix of them all, this workshop will teach you practical techniques, and an approach for putting them together to improve the user experience.

Who should attend?

Any technical communicator (writer, editor, illustrator, manager, information designer) who wants to:

• Learn how to make their work more usable and accessible for everyone
• Contribute to the usability of products they work on
• Develop skills to focus their work on usability and accessibility

What will you learn?

Participants will gain an understanding of:

• A user-centered process
• The relationship between usability and accessibility
• How to make practical decisions about how to choose usability techniques effectively

Practical exercises will focus on:

• Core skills of observation and interviewing
• Practice conducting user research sessions, usability tests and card sorting
• Consolidating user research sessions into personas
• Evaluating a product for usability and accessibility
• Analyzing and reporting usability results

You can register for this certification program – and the conference – at the STC 55th conference website today!

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