Sherina Bigby has recently been employed to deliver interaction design in seamless design integration for UK central and local government organisations and services, which will positively impact web users. Her new role includes addressing key areas of accessibility and meeting web compliance standards, as well as improving design aspects through research-driven practice.

Speaking about the opportunity, Course Leader and founder of Interactive Media Practice MA, Savraj Matharu said: “The work Sherina will be doing is immensely important, and highly impactful in our digital economy. Particularly given the monumental shift towards online and governmental infrastructure, her work and design practice will be seen by millions of online users. Accessibility is the practice of making your websites usable by as many people as possible – it sounds simple, but it is challenging, involving much divergence in research and practice, its very interdisciplinary.

“The online community have been discussing, grappling, researching and developing novel practice to improve web accessibility standards for over two decades now (since the early incarnation of the web). Legislation and compliance, which came into force for public sector bodies on 23 Sep 2018, ensures some form of standardisation for the public sector. This involves ensuring your website and or mobile app is accessible by making it ‘perceivable, operable, understandable and robust’.”

He also commented on the benefits of improving online accessibility, and said: “We traditionally think of accessibility concerned with people with disabilities, but the practice of making sites accessible also benefits other groups such as those using mobile devices, or those with slow network connections, for a much wider target audience reach. Given the increase usage of mobile consumption and online adoption by senior citizens, it’s in our interest to make this work now – with the world online.”