Summary: In episode 31 of UX Podcast James and Per are joined by Derek Featherstone from Simply Accessible to talk about infographics and how we can make them more accessible. We say "everything that needs to be said" and cover some of the challenges, types of accessibility problems, downsides of making infographics accessible, and share some practical tips. (Listening time: 36 minutes) References: Per's "excluding" infographic - Digitalt utanförskap i Sverige 2012 Chris Throup's Accessible infographics blog post WebAIM's Web Accessibility for Designers infographic Another accessible infographics example Accessible Infographics Community Group Putting Accessibility into Infographics Scalable vector graphics Simply Accessible's tips and tricks newsletter Transcript: James: Hello. Per: Were you going to do it? James: Go ahead. Go just start it. I was going to do it for once. Go on. Per: No. You go ahead. James: No. You’ve upset me now. Per: What episode are we on, James? James: Thirty-one. Per: Excellent. We had to check just before. James: Welcome. It’s a cold Monday afternoon here in Stockholm. Per: It is really cold in your studio. James: I know. Mondays are always the coldest day because it cools down over the weekend. I did try and warm it up. It’s raining outside and it’s a little bit windy and they said that snow is on the way. Per: Oh, really? James: It could be. It’s coming from the south but it will be awful if it does come because it’s still warm. Per: I never check the weather service. I wonder why not. James: You’re not English enough. Per: No. James: Or Swedish enough. Per: Well, I’m not Swedish enough either. James: No, exactly. Yeah. But today we’re going to be talking about infographics. Per: Yeah. James: And well one of the reasons why we’re going to be talking about it is because you have produced a couple of infographics recently Per. Per: Yeah. One for Brian Clifton. James: Who we’ve also interviewed here in UX Podcast. Per: That’s true. And also one for Digidel which is an abbreviation for Digital Delaktighet which basically means digital participation. James: Yeah. Per: So … James: That kind of got me – I got my teeth into Per earlier last week about the fact that he produced an infographic about the amount of people outside of the internet, excluded from the internet that in itself excluded people because it was a flat graphic. Per: Yeah. James: So for once we almost disagreed on something. Per: We almost disagreed. James: This we need to talk about. Per: Yeah. James: So what we’ve done is we’ve decided to give it an accessibility angle and we’re going to give Derek Featherstone a call who is an accessibility guy, a really good accessibility guy. We met him at UX Lx in Portugal. It has been this year I chatted to him and his talk on Friday was one of my favorite ones, from the Friday which you can go back and look at our notes and our podcast about that. I also took part in his workshop which is really good. Per: Yeah. Well he’s basically an authority on accessibility and we really like his stuff and what he produces and what he talks about and he has been doing this for a lot of years. James: He kindly said yes to be interviewed today. Per: Yeah. Let’s call on him. James: Here you go. Cue jingle. [Music] Derek: Hello there. Per: Hello Derek. Let’s give you a brief background about why we wanted to talk to you. Derek: Sure. Per: So I’ve been an advocate of accessibility for a lot of years. I worked in the usability arena for like, I don’t know, 15 years now maybe and recently I produced like two infographics and James is giving me a hard time about infographics. We both know that they’re not very accessible. Derek: Right. Per: At the same time, they’re incredible at getting people to share them and getting tweets and getting people’s attention basically.
