Welcome to September's edition of USEworthy. In this issue, Marty Carroll, Director of Usability Practice at The Usability Company looks at what charities with limited resources can do to make their websites compliant with accessibility guidelines.

 

Carl Kim, who recently joined the Usability Practice as a Usability Specialist tackles the debate on the effects of usability on creativity. Is usability compatible with creativity? Does it stifle originality? How can usability professionals and creatives work best together? Carl's article addresses these questions and more.

In addition, we provide an article that appeared on kablenet.com, August 6 on Catriona Campbell, The Usability Company's Founder and Chairman, and the recently launched quality framework for UK government website design. Catriona discusses the basis of the framework and the factors affecting the implementation of the guidelines including the risks posed by the general lack of sufficient budget for web development in the public sector.

August was a hot month at The Usability Company. We are happy to announce that we have now held 2 accessibility training courses from which we have received very positive feedback from the attendees. September' s session is almost sold out, with only three places left. If you are considering making your website or Intranet accessible to all, accessibility training should be your first step toward that goal.

The Usability Company's staff was invited to speak at several usability related events last month, highlights of which were the e-consultancy roundtable and the AIGA Experience Design meeting. Catriona Campbell was invited to participate at the e-Consultancy roundtable August 26 focusing on the key issues and trends within usability. The roundtable explored what the attendees felt were the biggest issues and challenges for the usability industry, the main trends and their favourite resources.

AIGA Experience Design London invited Catriona to speak at their meeting on designing for e-Government, September 3. Catriona spoke on the meeting's themes, which included the following questions. How do designers design for the e-government 'back office' and evangelise user experience in government? How do designers create and work with government-mandated standards for user interface and usability? And where do policy agendas run up against designer led approaches to problem-solving?

This year's British HCI conference will take place in Bath, England, 8-12 September 2003 and it is set to be a fantastic event. The conference will bring together researchers, practitioners, educators and users with interests in the many facets of human-computer interaction, usability and interactive systems from all over the world. Catriona Campbell is chairing this year's Industry Day, Thursday, September 11.

Keynote speakers include Andrew Pinder, UK Government E-envoy and Gordon Smiley, Group Director for Microsoft's enterprise customers, partners and consultancies. Thursday is also the day of the conference dinner, which will be held in the historic Roman Baths and Pump Room in Bath and starts at 7.30 pm. For more information on the conference, the conference dinner and to purchase tickets, please visit the British HCI Group website.

Web and Intranet accessibility has become an important issue for moral, legal and business reasons, so much so that RNIB recently announced that it is to bring the first legal cases for lack of online accessibility.

As a usability specialist I often find myself being acutely aware of the implications of my recommendations to those in new media who are creative by vocation, such as graphic designers. This is because one of the basic tenets of usability is minimising cognitive processing by users, 'the need to figure out what they need to do'. 

Government plans to make official websites accessible by anyone could be hit by a cash shortfall.