Over the last few months, Design and Code have been working with Birds of Paradise Theatre Company, a Glasgow based theatre company celebrating disabled artists, on a really exciting new project, entitled ‘Locked World’.
The aim of this project is to explore and answer the question of accessibility in digital art. Birds of Paradise Theatre Company approached Design and Code with the aim of creating a highly accessible digital arts platform, featuring new work by emerging disabled artists in Scotland. The project aims to create an immersive online experience that can be accessible to anyone – with or without access requirements. Locked World also aims to find new and exciting ways to work with accessibility.
‘Locked World’ is a really important project and is addressing some key issues in digital design so there is a lot of drive to make it as good as possible. There is a real team feeling between Design and Code and Birds of Paradise Theatre Company - Design and Code is not working for, but with the client. Early on Design and Code had the opportunity to take part in a disability equality training session which consisted of an insight into the history of disability politics and rights; the language used around disability and how this has changed over time; the models of disability and how often people are disabled by society.
Design and Code have also had the chance to meet some of the artists creating artwork for ‘Locked World’ – it was great to discuss the work they are making and how it fits with the overall concept of the project.
Throughout the project, Design and Code have been able to work with Dalton Weir, a web access consultant, who has been a great sounding board for accessibility requirements and the WCAG guidelines, helping ensure they stay on the right track and meet the legal requirements. Their aim throughout this project is to think about accessibility as people rather than a checklist, however, it’s important not to lose sight of the guidelines as they’re a great tool to help measure how accessible the site is. Having Dalton’s knowledge and experience on this project will really help make it as accessible as possible for the audience.
An increasing trend in the past few years has been the use of accessibility panels or widgets. These can be great to help fix simple issues and make a website more accessible by providing tools such as a larger cursor or changing the contrast, however, they shift the focus of accessibility to an afterthought. They adhere to the narrative that you can fix a websites accessibility issues with ‘one line of javascript’ which in most cases will never be the case as making a website accessible is much more complex than this. In order to create an immersive experience for everyone, including those with disabilities and access requirements, accessibility needs to be part of the whole journey.
Next, Design and Code will be moving onto the conceive stage of the project where they will explore ways in which they can create an immersive and accessible platform in some new and exciting ways.
Find out more about the project and keep up to date with the progress here.
Read more about the concept behind ‘Locked World’ here.