Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2023 event

[GBKS]

May 18, 2023 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day and we got listed on the event page. Our research for the accessibility page has found quite a few issues with various wallets. Let's rally on May 18, invite everyone to learn about accessibility, and help make some improvements.

Generally, we are hoping to:

• Raise awareness and conversation
• Get people to learn something new (see resources below)
• Get people to contribute
  • People with accessibility can share their needs
  • Designers can test and identify fixes
  • Developers can implement fixes (find a list of issues here)

Really, anyone can help in whichever way they would like.

We've reached out to teams, still waiting for some answers. So far:

• Zeus will offer a 1M sat bounty (to be added to the bounty page) for accessibility fixes (example issue)

Join us on at 7:00 UTC on May 18 for a kick-off session. We'll also chat on this topic during our community call on May 17 at 17:00 UTC.

Useful resources:

• The accessibility page in the Bitcoin Design Guide
• Quick (2.5 min) demo video of mobile testing (iPhone)
• Quick (7 min) demo video of website testing (Safari & Mac)
• Learning bitcoin & design call recording (1 hour) on accessibility testing
• Issues we have found and posted to various wallet project GitHub repos

Get a sweet Nostr badge (see banner image) for participating. Just send a DM to the Bitcoin Design Nostr account, share what you did, and we'll award you the badge. To DM us, use a client like Snort (web), Damus (iOS), or Amethyst (Android).

Join us. It's just one day, and together we can make a dent and allow more people to use bitcoin.

[mouxdesign]

Some ideas:

Accessibility testing live session: A live session where there are 2 parts (the 3rd part could be done async) Part 1: How to test, we can create a spreadsheet with a bunch of LN wallet names and before the call we all download a wallet of our choice and prepare to test it. Part 2: We note down accessibility issues and we each log those as issues on the Github of the LN wallet. Part 3; Asynchronously: We can each come up with design solutions to these accessibility issues.

Would be an idea to focus on the redesign and testing of one particular screen/s? The screen that we feel impact the usability the most, such as the:

1. QR code screen
2. Seed phrase screen

We could come up with some very specific recommendations for these ones.

Also and idea to invite some people who in the bgc have commented/shown interest in this topic.

[GBKS]

I submitted an application to be added to the accessibility day event list. Will report what I hear back.

[GBKS]

Our event is now listed on the events page.

[GBKS]

Adding a few more ideas to what @mouxdesign wrote:

• Every participant gets a Nostr badge. We'd need to figure out what participating means (joining a call, filing an issue, etc). There could also be different tiers (the most fixes completed)
• The live session is a good idea, but will only work for people in certain time zones who are free then. We should also try to offer async options
• We could create programming for our Twitter/Nostr accounts and post about accessibility resources and information throughout the day - pro-active education
• What about bounties? We could offer bounties in sats for fixes, doesn't have to be a big amount, more for gamification.

For participation, I see a few options:

• Casual learning - we provide links and videos they can browse (example)
• Hands-on learning & designing - live session (example)
• Fixing - we provide Github issues to tackle (example)

Accessibility is a huge topic. We've been mostly focused on a fairly narrow part recently, which is a good thing because it allows us to make progress there. For this day, you think we should also offer a very broad view of it? Maybe in the live session?

I also think that a big part of it is to rally a core group for this day ahead of time, so we have a certain buzz going.

[GBKS]

Did a bit of a rewrite of the main issue since we are sending people here for event info. It was previously more of a proposal. Since we're now actively doing this and have a plan, the change seems appropriate.

[GBKS]

Alright, it's a wrap, but the glorious quest to let people use bitcoin in a way that works for them continues. Check the recording of yesterday's session here. We had quite a few different people and teams participate (see this tweet), while we were competing with Bitcoin Miami for attention, so I consider this event a success.

Will be interesting to do another one next year and see what we've managed to get done by then.