Regine M. Gilbert book quotes

 

P.1 The 21st century has provided us with more connectivity than our ancestors could have dreamed of.

P.7 Technology is part of life and as such, we no longer go a day without it.

P.6 There are major corporations working on getting knowledge about accessibility out to the public. Microsoft has taken a particular interest in the area of inclusive design, and they created the universal design toolkit which looks at people who may have permanent, temporary or situational disabilities.

P.84 A house without a frame cannot stand on its own…frameworks can provide structure around how you might approach certain problems…having a framework could put everyone on the same page.

Part of working to achieve inclusive design starts with having an idea of who you are serving and who you could possibly be excluding.

P.122 Assistive technology promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. Assistive technology products are designed to provide additional accessibility to individuals who have physical or cognitive difficulties, impairments and disabilities,

P.123 There are so many instances where, through minor modifications, you can make a mainstream product accessible.

P.143 This is a very exciting time for new developments in assistive technology. Not only are existing assistive technology programs regularly updated, but new and previously unseen technology is en route to improve accessibility for persons with disabilities.

P.146 Creating a culture of accessibility is not the job of a single person; it takes a village to make accessible products.

Planting seeds is one way to include something new into the workflow. What one can do is plant the seed of why accessibility and inclusivity are important. This makes making small recommendations or changes to incorporate accessibility in the workflow or educating others on what it means to learning, and implementation accessibility is an ongoing process.

P.148 As the internet and other digital technologies become increasingly prevalent in daily life, it’s not hard to argue that web accessibility is a civil right for people with disabilities.

P.148 Disabilities come in many forms, including hearing disabilities, visual disabilities, motor disabilities and cognitive disabilities.

P.164 STEVE GRUG Quote:

Accessibility is the right thing to do. And not just the right thing; it’s profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people’s lives. How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people’s lives just by doing our job a little better.

P.173 Part of the issue is that standards and guidelines tend to focus more on code than design, more on output than outcome, and more on compliance than experience. As such, technically compliant pages could be built that are not the most usable for disabled users.

P.189 Matti Makkonen in a Copenhagen pizzeria with two others invented SMS texting for deaf people to communicate, but when SMS offered an incredible new method for saving telecom bandwidth, the world of cellular telecommunications changed. And now we all benefit from this technological invention.

The ‘curb cut’ effect refers to actual sidewalk curb cuts, an innovation that was implemented throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It is now a requirement after the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

Everyone benefited, not only people with wheelchairs. Parents pushing strollers, workers pushing carts, business travellers wheeling luggage, even runners and skateboarders. 

In design principles this is referred to as universal design.