We can provide a range of services focusing on developing and using technology to support excluded groups, in particular older and disabled people.
All of our services offer you the opportunity to tap directly into the research, knowledge and experience that we've built up over many years of academic research and working with real people to understand how technology can best be designed to help improve their lives.
We'll review your web site, software application, smartphone or tablet PC app, digital content, e-learning resource or other ICT for accessibility issues, and provide you with advice on what sort of barrier may exist and how best to overcome them. We've been doing this for over 10 years, and use our own well-established methodology to reports against current recognised best practice in accessible design (W3C WCAG, Section 508).
We can provide reports tailored for all audiences and all levels of technical capabilities; we can also provide multimedia audits where we use video and audio to present the findings of our reviews.
We also offer a dedicated web authoring tool accessibility review service. This covers Content Management Systems (CMSs), Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), web sites that support user-generated content, and other web-based content creation tools. Are you sure the tool you use or make supports all users, regardless of their technical skills, in accessible content creation? If not, we can help you identify weaknesses and how to overcome them.
We have access to a large pool of older and disabled participants who we can engage to carry out evaluations of your web site or software application. In return you get an insight into how 'usably accessible' your resource is.
Are you interested in the accessibility of your technologies in out-of-laboratory conditions? DMAG can conduct long or short-term ethnographical studies of the everyday interactions (accessibility, use) of real people with real technologies in real-life settings. DMAG can also provide you with tailored ethnographical reports.
We can engage people who have moderate to severe visual, hearing, physical and/or cognitive impairments. Members of our older participant group have a very diverse set of capabilities, experiences and attitudes to technology so can provide particularly valuable feedback on the usability and usefulness of technology products to seniors.
Additionally, should you be interested in identifying the elements that attract the most attention - as well as those elements that are ignored - we can evaluate your web site or software application using eyetracking technology.
We can advise on accessibility and inclusive design at all stages of a digital resource development lifecycle. The earlier we're involved, the more effective we can be!
We're happy to provide hands-on training in accessible web design and evaluation; either here in Dundee or at a venue of your choice.
If you are unclear about the most appropriate or effective approach to using or providing technology in a way that includes rather than excludes staff or customers, we can help. We'll provide advice on how to develop and implement an organisation accessibility strategy in a holistic, creative - and pragmatic - manner, so that you are not constrained by extreme interpretations of guidelines or legislation.
We can provide advice on technology procurement and accessibility - how to ask for accessibility in the right way, and how to ensure that you've got what you ask for.
If you're conducting or putting together a research project and want advice or support on how accessibility needs to be considered in the technology you use or create, we'll be happy to help.
Note that we are not lawyers, so any advice we provide relating to legislation is our opinion as accessibility specialists. We always recommend you seek professional legal advice on your obligations under disability discrimination legislation or any other relevant legislation.
As the Web becomes less a collection of static documents and more a suite of applications supporting increasingly diverse and complex interactions, so a plethora of new technologies are emerging to allow web developers to suport this interactivity. While technologies such as HTML5 and AJAX, and off-the-shelf user interface libraries, can help developers create engaging and powerful rich internet applications, these technologies bring with them new accessibility challenges.
We can provide advice on accessibility and use of emerging technologies, so that the rich internet applications you create are as accessible as possible.
If you would like us to speak at your event on any accessibility related topic - web accessibility, inclusive design, accessible digital content authoring, for example - just let us know.
Contact dmag@computing.dundee.ac.uk to discuss your requirements.