Summit ’13: User Experience and Accessibility Information at the Summit

Guest post by Karen Bachmann

The 2013 Summit offers a User Experience and Accessibility track filled with excellent practical presentations. Many of these sessions are presented by well-known authors and industry leaders. Here’s a quick overview of what you can look forward to.

The following sessions discuss accessibility, plain language, and translation and how to ensure your work is usable by everyone who needs it. These sessions were coordinated by the presenters to complement each other and provide a comprehensive exploration of creating and delivering accessible content:

• Writing for Everyone: SEO, ESL, Translation, and Accessibility, Char James-Tanny
• Accessibility in Documentation, Media and Web Design, Mike Paciello
• Content for Everyone: Making Information and Multimedia Accessible, Whitney Quesenbery

You can explore the intersection of UX and technical communication in the following sessions that look at the overall relationship between the fields, an application of technical documentation in the UI design process, and an exploration of what makes communication an effective part of the user experience:

• Effectively Communicating UI and Interaction Design, Karen Bachmann
• Formalizing the Technical Communication and User Experience Relationship, Lori Fisher
• Addicted to Meaning: Mental Models for Technical Communicators, Kai Weber

In the following sessions, UX practitioners and those entering the field can learn practical techniques and methods for their work, as well as extend familiar tools such as personas to deliver richer experiences:

• Storytelling the Results of Heuristic Evaluation, Carol Barnum
• Customer Journey Maps: Visualizing an Engaging Customer Experience, Donn DeBoard
• Usability Testing to Evaluate Web & Mobile Content, Cory Lebson
• Game On! Creating User Experience for Gamified Products, Marta Rauch
• Purposes, Personas, Conversations, Ginny Redish

This wide range of topics is being delivered by experienced practitioners. Whether you are interested in how UX and accessibility apply to your technical communication work or are a UX practitioner looking for new tools and ways to approach your work, the User Experience and Accessibility track has presentations to benefit you and your work immediately. See you at the Summit!