Made Simpler

Happy Holidays! Wishing our clients and networks a peaceful and restful holiday. Thank you for trusting us this year. We have loved working with you to design better and more accessible experiences for your staff, your patients, your clients & your communities, in disability, aged care and in health care. Image 1: Our team including Kristen the guide dog, gathered on and around a sofa. Enjoying a rare face to face meet up. Image 2: Phil, Louisa and Katrina, sitting in front of a Christmas tree at lunch. Paula off already enjoying a well deserved break!

Our team attended the A11Y Camp conference last week - Australia's annual conference on digital accessibility and inclusion. Presentations covered accessibility from both design and development perspectives. Here are our collective top takeaways of the day: Adrian Roselli opened the conference and lamented the ever-present mind-boggling bad experiences. We love his term ‘invisible barriers’ as opposed to ‘invisible disabilities’ which switches the responsibility from the person to the thing they are trying to use/access. Maia Miller (Aleph Accessibility) demonstrated how you can take any group of people, such as the Bridgerton series characters, and find a diverse set of needs. It was entertaining to see how Lady Danbury, Francesca and other characters would benefit from accessibility in today’s world. Universal design. Inclusive design. Equitable design; does the label matter? According to Charlii Parker (Intopia), the short answer is no. People don’t care about definitions, theories, design methods. They just want technology to work. This is never truer than in digital health, where people just want to get tasks done, so they can focus on what matters – their health! Beau Vass (TTC Global) demonstrated how automated tools are in reality only uncovering 10% of accessibility issues, so probably not the way to test accessibility. Ally Tutkaluk (Lives Lived Well) talked about designing for people experiencing intoxication, trauma, or emotional stress. A great reminder about hidden or temporary conditions when designing. Allison Ravenhall (Comm bank) pointed out that built-in accessibility features on devices may not be known to many users. Involving users in the design process is critical to revealing these assumptions. Greg Alchin (Service NSW) talked about Ubiquitous accessibility because the need is everywhere, and everyone benefits. Some stats to help with perspective:  - The number of people in Australia who identify as having a disability is equal to the population of Melbourne  - 47% of people have less than functional literacy  - The number of people in Australia who are legally blind nearly equals the population of the Gold Coast Thank you to Sarah Pulis and the team for putting on a very friendly and welcoming conference, with a jam-packed agenda! Image: Phil and Paula + Guide dog Kristen leaving Melbourne Convention Centre after a fantastic day at A11y Camp. #DigitalHealth #HealthDesign #InclusiveDesign #Accessibility

Meeting IRL for the first time, at Melbourne's A11y camp yesterday, was... awesome! With Paula based in Geelong and the rest of us spread across Sydney, clashing calendars and limited time to travel meant that this was the first time we'd all managed to get together, despite working together for the past 2 years. You can't beat IRL. Good times were had. More to follow about the conference. Photo Description: Phil, Katrina, Louisa, Paula and Guide Dog Kristen standing in front of an A11y camp banner. Everyone is smiling at the camera, except Kristen who's looking at the food she can smell.

We're working with the team on the next generation of the Statewide Health Literacy Hub and here's a couple of ways you can get involved: Follow their linkedin page to hear of communities of practice, tools and resources, events, elearning, and a new hub (aka website+) in the making.   https://lnkd.in/g59E6t6F Next week is their launch event, there's limited tickets left or you can stream it: https://lnkd.in/gq3SgN9R  (we'll be there Wednesday, say hi if you make it IRL!) Photo description: Photo of Phil, Katrina and Louisa from Made Simpler, with Dana, Dipti and Christie from the NSW Statewide Health Literacy Hub team, sitting together on wooden auditorium steps at Westmead Hospital.

It’s fun being 5! In the blink of an eye, we have turned five years old. Our time has been packed full of workshopping, designing, researching and strategising. For clients across the life cycle of health: pregnancy, NICU, managing complex health, disability, hospital and emergency, disease survivorship, aged care, fitness and elite sport. Thank you for trusting us. We can’t wait for the next five! Image 1: graphic with text “it’s fun being five”. Image 2: Lou, Katrina, Phil and Paula laughing on a Zoom meet. Image 3: Lou, Phil and Katrina rugged up in Melbourne drinking coffee. Image 4: Lou and Katrina photo with Adam Spencer at Healthmetrics Conference. Image 5: Lou and Phil excited about mentoring Remarkable designathon.