Teaching Philosophy

Kelly Stack, Ph.D.

Usability and Accessibility

Access to the web for people with disabilities became one of my passions in the mid-1990's, and even though it was created in 1997, this reference guide (co-authored by Patrick Burke and Guido Grimaldi) to Specific Barriers to Web Access still contains valid and valuable information for technologists struggling to understand accessibility issues.

As the leader of the UCLA Disability Access Web workgroup, I was responsible for bringing together a diverse group of content experts to create a single point of information for disabled visitors, students, staff, and faculty at UCLA. This afforded me an early opportunity to reflect on the parallels and differences between physical and virtual spaces through an article on Signage in Cyberspace.

All of the examples in this web site demonstrate principles of usability and accessibility. Modules containing audio are always accompanied by text, either open or closed. Images are accompanied by alt tags and, where needed, links to longer descriptions. Turn off the style sheet in your browser and you will see that the pages still make sense; semantically-appropriate coding makes that possible without sacrificing visual design clues for sighted users.

My approach to web design is heavily influenced by Jakob Nielsen and Edward Tufte, both of whom emphasize simplicity and deliberate use of design elements to achieve desired results. Nielsen's "discount usability engineering" methodology enables the designer to rapidly detect and remove barriers to accessibility and usability.