We often talk about accessibility in connection with the vision of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) regulations coming into force. Rarely, however - in the context of UX research. Whitney Quesenbery, author of "A Web for Everyone" says: "Usability and accessibility are twins separated at birth." What happens when these two perspectives meet again?

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We know that 16% of the world's population experience significant disabilities, but do we include them in our research groups? Can we say that our website is intuitive if we don’t have participants who use technology differently in our research? How to find people with a variety of abilities who are already part of our audience?

If this is the first time we are doing research with people with impairments, what should we cover? How can we prepare for the study, design the screener, and how can we conduct the studies? What differs? And finally: how can all of that positively affect a product?

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I will base the presentation on practical tips from my experience and UX research projects for NGOs and products. I’ll share my experience and learnings (what worked, what didn’t) from a solution that we are currently working on at intive, designed for people with hearing or visual impairment.

During workshops, I will show the process of creating universal usability on examples (e.g., constructing a screener, preparing for research, usability testing tasks, and metrics).

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