Zuzana Kunckova

It’s maths anxiety awareness day. A good time to give our poster some love. Made with Jane McFadyen, Rachel Malic and a generous amount of help from others. Get the poster from the DWP accessibility manual. https://lnkd.in/edk-_K8A More research and other bits on accessiblenumbers.com. Imagine description. A poster titled “Designing for users with dyscalculia or low numeracy.” It gives ‘do’ and ‘do not’ guidance. Do: - Round numbers to the nearest whole number - Leave space around numbers - Fill in information you already have - Use sentences to add context about numbers. - Let people include spaces when entering nimbets - Conduct user research with people who struggle with numbers Do not: - Use decimals unless it’s money - Overwhelm people with too much content - Expect users to repeat or remember numbers - Use tables or grids without explaining what the numbers mean - Rush users to enter a number accurately - Force people to enter a number or do a sum to verify themselves #MathsAnxiety

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If you’ve been cold pitching like this, you’re doing it wrong. Cold pitching is one of the highest-leverage strategies a freelancer can use to land their next job. But the way many of you go about it? It’s not working because your approach is off. You’re sending messages with no direction. You’re reaching out to random businesses. You’re copying a template you saw in someone’s free ebook. Then you say cold pitching doesn’t work? It does. You just haven’t learned how to do it right. In the Career Crafters Academy, I walk my students and community members through what a solid cold pitch strategy looks like. Let me give you a quick breakdown: 📌Start with clarity. Who exactly are you trying to pitch? Is it e-commerce founders? Coaches? Real estate professionals? If you’re pitching everyone, you’re reaching no one. 📌Refine your offer. Don’t pitch by saying, “I’m a virtual assistant.” Pitch saying “I help Airbnb hosts increase their guest satisfaction with smooth messaging systems.” Be specific. Make it tangible. 📌Find them where they already are. LinkedIn, Instagram, company websites, Google, etcc. These people aren’t hiding. You’re just not searching well enough. 📌Make your message about them — not you. Most freelancers go, “Hi, I’m a freelancer. I offer X, Y, Z…” The client stops reading right there. Lead with what you noticed about them. Make it personal. Make it about solving a problem for them. 📌Track your pitches. You can’t measure progress if you’re not tracking. Note who you’ve reached out to, when, and how they responded. Cold pitching is a numbers + relationship game. 📌Stay consistent. Five cold DMs in a month won’t move anything. Sending one pitch a week is not a strategy. If you want to win here, you need to master consistency and show up every day. This is the same method my students use. And yes, it works, because it’s rooted in clarity, intention, and consistency. So now I want to know: which part of your cold pitching process needs a revamp? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

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Remember… Just doing an ‘accessibility audit’ on a website doesn’t mean you are then simply done with accessibility… This is often the beginning for many but demonstrates why it’s so important to embed accessibility best practice into your core processes. Focus on human or people centred design first not on how quickly you can get that new product out and finish a sprint… This approach excludes your disabled customers or people who just need to work differently. Instead learn about how and why people including those with a disability need your product to work which will help ensure everybody is represents and included. Need help with this? Reach out I like to talk a lot 🤣 #Accessibility

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The Gov.uk Digital Services team created 'the world’s least-accessible webpage' But they had a good reason to do so... There are lots of automated accessibility testing tools out there. A variety are used across Government services, and the team wanted to understand how they compared. To do this they needed a website that broke all the accessibility rules. This led the GDS Accessibility team to create the world’s least accessible web page, with 143 failures. What did they learn? 👉 42 issues (29%) were not picked up by any tool 👉 The most effective tool, Tenon found 37% of the issues. 👉 The worst was Google Developer Tools, which only managed 17%. This work was useful for highlighting which tools are most and least effective, as well as different situations where one tool might be a better choice than others. It also was a good reminder that, though automated testing can be useful it is not a replacement for manual testing. Mehmet Duran said: "A good analogy is to think of a testing tool as like using a spellchecker. It can certainly help you pick up issues, but it should never be used in isolation. To be most useful, automated tools should be combined with manual inspection and user research." Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/extXQvJR

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Most businesses optimise their website for searches like "web designer Sheffield" or "copywriter for tech companies" - basically variations of what they do. But your potential clients aren't always searching for you that way. Often they're searching for the problem they're trying to solve, rather than the service you offer. Go to Google and type in the main problem your service solves. Don't hit enter - look at what Google suggests as you type. Those are real searches people are making. For example: - A web designer might find people search "website looks unprofessional" or "website not getting enquiries" - A copywriter might find "website copy sounds corporate" or "about page doesn't sound like me" - A business coach might find "can't get clients consistently" or "pricing feels random" If you've got a blog or resources section, write content that talks about these problems, and addresses how you can help solve them. If you don't have a blog, add a paragraph to your homepage or service pages addressing these exact problems. This will help you to show up when people are actively looking for help - not just when they've finally worked out the name of the service they need. *Yes, this is from my newsletter on Tuesday, but as only about 3 of you saw it I'm posting it again today, because I'm lazy. ---- If you're a copywriter who wants to offer proper SEO services and land ongoing retainer work instead of one-off projects, Ascend might be for you. 6 months. 10 spaces. Starts January. https://lnkd.in/ewZRcW-M

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"Their ideal clients aren't disabled, so we don't do any accessibility work on their website" Another web designer said this to me on a call once, so I want to share this wee reminder 👇 When we don't design with accessibility in mind, here's what we end up with: 1. Text that's too hard to read due to size, colour contrast, or both (meaning ANYONE with low vision due to an impairment or just aging eye-balls can't read your content) 2. Images without alt tags, so screen reader users have no idea what's going on (image a person who's blind, trying to book your service but can't get a visual description of the services you offer - that's just 💩) 3. Poor colour combos and unclear links that people with colour blindness struggle to use 4. Auto-slides that people can't read quickly enough before it jumps to the next one - does this drive anyone else nuts, or just me? These are just a few examples, and all lead to a pretty rubbish user experience. Which is not what we want our inclusive businesses to provide. So, next time you're wanting to refresh your website, check that your developer is going to do this work... Or save yourself time, and drop me a message! #AccessibleWebDesign #InclusiveDesign #AccessibleMarketing #InclusiveBusiness

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🔧 Accessibility Tools You Should Be Using 🔧 As developers, it's our job to make the web a better place for everyone, which means ensuring our apps and websites are accessible to all users! Here are a couple of tools I use to ensure my designs meet accessibility standards: 🌈 Colour Contrast Checker – I rely on this tool to test the colour contrast in my designs and make sure they're legible for all users. It's simple to use but incredibly effective in improving accessibility! Link: https://lnkd.in/gcpuNaQ2 👀 Screen Reader Testing – I always use a screen reader to test how well my content is read aloud and make sure it's clear and easy to navigate. Wave by WebAIM is great for identifying potential accessibility issues. It’s available as a Chrome extension. Extension: https://lnkd.in/gXZ4xvVt ⌨️ Keyboard Navigation Testing – It’s essential to make sure users can navigate your site using only the keyboard. Tools like axe help identify keyboard navigation issues that could be overlooked. You can download this as a chrome extension as well. Extension: https://lnkd.in/gizkZ2mZ These tools have really helped me improve my designs and projects. I’d love to hear what tools you use! #Tech #WebDevelopment #Accessibility #InclusiveDesign #AlwaysLearning #DevTools #SoftwareDevelopment 

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It’s Gloabal Accessibility Awareness Day today. It’s not enough to be aware of accessibility though, and there’s lots of actionable things you can do! 1. When sharing links, attach the link to descriptive text so people know where they’re being taken to (I realise the irony of this message on a platform where you literally cannot do this due to lack of functionality - do better, LinkedIn). This makes using the web better and improves screen reader users experience to have the link text read, but is also just good practice anyway in an age of cybersecurity to give clear information about web links. 2. If adding images to any posts, content, etc - please add an alternative text description (alt text, sometimes referred to as description field for images on some software). Make sure the description for the image covers the key important information including inferred information like with memes. This is useful not just for those with low vision or other disabilities using screen readers to read the text, but is useful for people on low bandwidth where images may be slow to load. 3. Use headings and dot points to chunk your content down. This is important for everyone and makes scanning a web page easier. Headings are also really important for screen reader users navigation, so please use the right headings levels in the right hierarchy order (eg one H1 title heading, then relevant sub headings). Using headings correctly also makes you a great content writer /copywriter and people will take your work more seriously! 4. Try to avoid using PDFs where you can, or at least make sure your PDFs are developed to be truly accessible, as most aren’t. Where this isn’t possible, consider providing an alternative text or html format alongside the PDF version. Most of these are really easy to do with a bit of practice (as long as the tools we use allow them), and are writing for the web principles that are unlikely to go out of style any time soon. PS: A last additional one for real allies out there: 5. If the software doesn’t allow you to do the above (looking at you, LinkedIn, but also tools like Canva), then complain to the vendor company/developers and vote with your wallet where you can. This one does actually take some effort, but the only way companies do better is when they know that users take it seriously and affects their bottom line. I think I’ll heed my own advice and go harass LinkedIn now as two of those top three things are impossible on this platform.

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Please, If an organisation is going to recruit an accessibility vacancy, at least ensure your application process is accessible and usable by those of us who rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers. Simply, not good enough and also blatant discrimination.

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