Reader's Corner No.4: Favorite accessibility tools, empathy at work, and user experience driven design

November 28, 2016

We have a diverse assortment of topics covered this week: favorite accessibility tools, empathy in the workplace, and user experience driving design.

The Experts have Spoken! Our Favorite Accessibility Tools

David Minton

Source: The Deque Blog

Takeaway: Website accessibility is an often underappreciated aspect of website design and development. Look for accessibility to become more important, both as the population ages and has a need for improved accessibility, along with anticipated changes in the legal landscape (in the 2016-17 timeframe). Luckily, the testing tools are getting better and better all the time.

Tags: #Accessibility, #Tools


How Important Is It For Professionals to Have Empathy?

Michael Nicholson

Source: Team Gantt

Takeaway: Empathy in the professional world has been on the decline in America over the last few years. Lack of empathy causes managers and leaders to look at team members as resources and numbers to move around, which in turn reduces productivity, engagement, and employee loyalty. By engaging team members in small groups, acknowledging and acting on their emotions, and identifying and leveraging commonalities in groups.

Tags: #Project Management, #Work Culture


How I Wrote Arrival (and What I Learned Doing It)

David Gouch

Source: The Talkhouse

Takeaway: I found it really interesting how Heisserer struggled to describe in words an unusual element of his story, only to realize the solution was to use a picture. But his screenwriting app didn’t support adding images. He had to figure out how to workaround the app’s limitations. I looked up some forums about adding images to screenplays and it’s true—people said it was wrong to add images to screenplays; one developer said no way would he add that feature.

Arrival is still in theaters and making over $100 million.

Tags: #ItJustWorks, #User Experience


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