What Why How

During the fall semester of my senior year, I completed my senior capstone project for my interactive media studies major. The assignment was to create a solution to any problem, however this solution must include some sort of business, technology, and design component (three pillars of the department of emerging technology of business + design). 

My project identified the problems caused by inaccessible websites, and brought awareness to the lack of accessibility on most websites. During my initial research, I learned that 94.7% of the world’s top one million websites do not offer full accessibility. That statistic stuck out to me, and inspired me to investigate the reasons why many of our favorite websites are so inaccessible. During an interview I conducted with an individual with over 15 years of web design experience, I learned that the underlying problem regarding a lack of accessibility online, is a lack of awareness. My interviewee mentioned that in many cases, individuals hiring designers for their websites are unaware of the importance of accessibility on their company’s website, and that it is often up to the designer to include these features. Unfortunately, there are many designers who are also unaware of this need as well, ultimately leading to this inaccessible user experience that we are seeing. 

To combat these problems I came up with What Why How- the internet visual accessibility hub. What Why How is a one stop resource where users can learn the basics of What internet accessibility is, Why we need it, and How to include it in your website. What makes What Why How different from other accessibility resources online is that it is targeted specifically to corporate employees and designers. The website's copy is written in a concise, and easy to understand way- so that essentially anyone who comes across it will be able to understand it. Through my user research, I learned that users of this site prefer a brief and clean presentation of information, and that many of the resources that are available provide too much information for this audience's need, and are found to be overwhelming to my target users. The main goal of What Why How is to inspire its users through empathy building to evaluate their understanding of internet accessibility, and provide just enough useful information to drive the user to want to create an inclusive, accessible user experience in their website or future designs. Using targeted google search and display ads, this website will be marketed directly toward the target audience.