I am a fan of Creature Discomforts! I just discovered these delightful creations from Aardman Animations while writing for another blog. As I wrote in that blog entry, these animations were made to help re-brand a UK charity called Leonard Cheshire Disability. This type of communication appeals to me immensely. I admire the animation work of Aardman Animations and love watching their stories unfold. At the same time, in this case, I am also “educated” about disabilities. Mary Poppins’ rule about “a spoonful of sugar” helping the medicine go down frequently applies to education – and I could add: technical communication. How to get a difficult, serious, sensitive message across in the best possible way? That is a task that many technical communicators face every day. Seeing a presentation like this is a tremendous inspiration, although the effort behind clay or stop-motion animation is so huge that it is definitely…
Comments closedTag: accessibility
I love podcasts, but some can be so frustrating. The “some” I am talking about are those where a lecture or presentation was recorded. With a simple Q&A session, the problem is the speaker not repeating the question from the audience. Repeating the question is good practice anyway, as pointed out by Ken Molay in a recent webinar. For the questioner, it is proof that the speaker comprehended the question. For podcast listeners, the question gets heard! Any dialog in the audience during the Q&A is often lost on the podcast listener. Here I can understand that it is difficult for the speaker to repeat all the ideas discussed between two or more people in the audience. If audience participation through dialog is a big part of the event being recorded, I think more microphones are called for. In some ways, that might be why it is nice to leave…
8 CommentsPerception of color might be a forgotten or neglected disability. Some people notice or think about disabilities only when they are quite apparent, such as someone in a wheelchair or someone using a white cane when walking down the street. When you know that someone can see, you don’t immediately think that they might perceive colors quite differently from the way you perceive colors. Having only recently discovered the Webaxe podcasts, I have been catching up on all their older podcasts. Their 16th episode was about color and accessibility. It inspired me to post some information about color. The references apply to Web, but you can also think about these matters in document design. This particular podcast had a nice little discussion about color, and the related blog entry pointed to an article by Ann McMeekin, Byte Size Standards, where she discusses coloring with contrast and provides many useful links…
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