Vistor Response: Regine Gilbert

Regine's presentation reminded me of when I took a UX class last semester, because I believe we also had Regine as a guest speaker on accessibility for that class as well. Hearing her mention certain UX terms like signifiers, affordances, etc. really made me think about the psychology of the human mind, and how certain visual indicators can translate information to us. The mention of "affordances" particularly—since they indicate what actions the user can "afford" or perform with the product—made me consider how, in respect to accessibility, the transfer of information from product to user can be (and must be) done in a variety of ways, since not everyone may have the same ways of physically perceiving external influences. Most people are used to visual signifiers/indicators of what actions are possible within a product, but for people that are visually impaired for instance, they have to rely on auditory or haptic signifiers, which is something that I never explicitly thought about until now (as in I never thought about what type of information/assumptions were being translated and absorbed by visually impaired people when they use apps, etc.).

Another thing I thought about is how it can be rather difficult to design for accessibility. One thing is when Regine mentioned how people should use no more than 5(?) colors when designing graphs, which made me think about how artists might have to face the internal battle of subjugating their aesthetic choice(s) in order to make it accessible to all users.