Inclusive New Media

About Accessibility

Rix Centre work

The production team at the Rix Centre have been making websites and multimedia for people with intellectual disabilities since 2001. In doing this, their aim has been to explore the potential of rich media to make content accessible and interesting to people with intellectual disabilities (ID). The team have used commissioned projects from ID organisations as opportunities to develop and trial different approaches to website production for this user community. Not all of the outcomes adhere strictly to WAI accessibility guidelines or to web standards, as the team and their director, Andy Minnion, acknowledge. However, as Andy says:

“The point first of all has been to work with people who had little or no text literacy and real challenges with intellectual understanding to see how we could use rich media to make meaningful and informative communications for them. Working from a WAI compliant position would have narrowed the scope of our trials unacceptably. We wanted to freely explore solutions with the neglected intellectual disability user community outside of established accessibility paradigms. These effectively appeared to address the needs of users with sensory and motor disabilities - sometimes at the expense of our users requirements. In more recent work we have applied what we learned in these experiments  to site designs that also addressed compliance to standards, our ‘easy-build’ websites, for example.”

Examples

Examples of Rix Centre projects include:

Trans-active

Trans-active is a Mencap project which brings teenagers with and without intellectual disabilities together to make multimedia which communicates the interests, aspirations and support needs of the intellectually disabled participants.

‘About Trans-active’ in the Teenzone describes the project to Teenagers with intellectual disabilities:

 

 

  

The Den is a play area produced by undergraduate students working with the Rix Centre.

The Tate Project

The Rix Centre was commissioned by HFT to make the TATE website to describe an inclusive project about employment to people with intellectual disabilities. Those with intellectual disabilities involved in the project have their own section called AT and Me where they can upload photographs and text.

HFT Karten CTEC Centre

The Home Farm Trust Karten CTEC Centre specialises in providing ICT training to staff working to support people with intellectual disabilities in a range of centres across the country, so that ICTs can be incorporated into their care. HFT commissioned The Rix Centre to produce this website a number of years ago.

The Road Ahead:

The Road Ahead website was commissioned by SCIE to display online a report about young people with intellectual disabilites views on transition information. The research was carried out by a group of young people with intellectual disabilities from an advocacy group called North Somerset People First.

p-cubed

p-cubed was an experimental project produced by undergraduate students working with the Rix Centre. Its aim was to tell the stories of a group of adults with intellectual disabilities in a multimedia form which was engaging and innovative.

The Big Tree - research

The Rix Centre's production work is shown and discussed in full in The Big Tree Website's research section

 

 

 

Top