Personas
Approved by EOWG 15 July 2016
Audience
EOWG determined to focus the web site redesign on meeting the needs of this audience:
- Primary:
- Doers (includes developers, designers, content creators, web administrators, etc)
- Planners
- Advocates
- Secondary
- Policy makers
Based on data collected through a survey monkey questionnaire (questions at the end of this report), the following personas were created:
Andy O’Sullivan Edit | Add Issue | All Issues
Andy O’Sullivan is “elite”, a hardcore code monkey. He is 39 years old, single and works for a software development company in Spain that employs about 200 people. Andy runs the Web servers, and leads the coding team for the company Web site. The most experienced guy in the company he takes the lead with technical decisions. He thinks all this accessibility stuff is just PC [politically correct] junk and that few people with disabilities ever use his site.
“I have a deadline, and it’s not like we have any disabled users anyway,” he says “I looked at the server logs, I should know.” Andy doesn’t see the need for accessibility. His boss heard about it and told him to check it out and report back to the team. Andy’s goal is to gather some quick, concise information about accessibility, and see what’s involved to implement it on the company site. His main interest is in placating his boss so he can work on other things. Since Andy is the leader of the Web team and his boss is relying on his judgement, the company direction on accessibility will ultimately be his decision. Unless he sees the need for accessibility he isn’t going to waste his time. Andy is an amateur musician who plays fiddle on Wednesday evenings in a local pub with a group of other Celtic music lovers and players who gather for pleasure and learning.
Category: planner, programmer, doer
Anna-Lena Schneider Edit | Add Issue | All Issues
Anna-Lena Schneider is a coder by heart, caring deeply about the code quality of the work she’s doing in Bonn, Germany. She is passionate about web accessibility and learned about it when still in high school when she attended a summer hackathon event that encouraged girls to study programming and participate in technology events. One of the community volunteers was a blind woman who expertly used a screen reader and Anna-Lena was made aware of the power and importance of accessibility.
In her current job as a Senior Programmer in a financial services company, Anna-Lena’s main concern is providing a good user experience for all people. However she is facing some obstacles as German laws do not require accessibility. To persuade the team and management to invest the time, she is in need of good justification. She does not like to refer them to the WAI website because it “just doesn’t look good.” In addition to technical support, she is looking for arguments and resources that will not just make her colleagues agree but will energize and motivate them. While she, as developer, is able to easily read and understand information in English, she thinks it would be easier to convince people on the importance of accessibility if the information was available in her native language, German. Anna-Lena is single, and a world traveler, regularly booking urban as well as nature vacations such as last year’s trip to the Galapagos. When at home she goes to cinema and music concerts nearly every week with her friends.
Category: programmer, advocate, doer
Miles du Plessis Edit | Add Issue | All Issues
A graphic designer with an award-winning background in print design, Miles du Plessis has reluctantly migrated to the web and is currently employed as a graphic design for a boutique web design company in Johannesburg, South Africa. His company advertises that they will “build a beautiful brand” for their clients and Miles does most of the early conceptual and problem solving work by providing a range of visual presentation styles that reflect the correct use of typography, space, image and color for the specific project. Miles never thought about accessibility when designing for print and now struggles with web accessibility requirements and is often confused by them.
He is motivated by his belief that design is a structure that anticipates written and visual content that has not yet been created. His early work included creating signage and iconography for physical spaces and he understands design as the way to clarify relationships between parts. He sees this to be an important place where the designer brings value. He is sometimes intimidated by his lack of mastery of new technologies and is not actually very interested in the overall subject of accessibility, despite the fact that he has a hearing impairment himself. When there are client inquiries or requirements for accessibility or responsive design, he just asks that he be given “…the rules and I will follow them.” He is a vegetarian, a runner, and a dog lover, with an Australian shepherd named Ollie who Miles believes is smarter than most of his colleagues.
Category: designer, doer
Patricia Clark Edit | Add Issue | All Issues
Patricia Clark is a senior executive for a California Metro Transit company recently sued for a range of accessibility violations. In addition to improving the accessibility of their transportation services, the company must deliver to the courts a comprehensive web accessibility improvement plan to be implemented over the next five years. Patricia is guiding the effort, including developing accessibility policy, procedures, hiring practices, web and mobile app redesign and more that she “has probably not even thought of yet.”
Patricia has an MBA from the University of San Francisco and is a seasoned professional and problem solver who knows how to support a team when faced with difficult challenges. She understands the issues since she has acquired age related disabilities over the last several years. She has serious arthritis and uses voice input software that maps to the keyboard. Patricia is particularly interested in providing her staff with the tools they need for success and is seeking long term solutions that will be integrated into their systems going forward. She has three grown children and a new baby granddaughter with whom she enjoys family gatherings, cooking for her extended family, and shopping trips to Mexico.
Category: planner, policy
Sammy Santos Edit | Add Issue | All Issues
A full stack web programmer who lives in Manila, the Philippines, Sammy Santos works freelance contracts for web development projects of all sizes using various technologies. He is married with four small children and is a time management wizard. His backend skills include PHP, Codeigniter, Sql/NoSql, and more. Front end skills include HTML5, CSS/SCSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, Jquery, Angular, Webcomponents, etc. Sammy manages small teams as needed and provides some system administration as well. Because of his broad skill set and freelance status, Sammy has clients from all over the world with various accessibility requests and requirements.
He subscribes to the WAI-IG and tries to stay current with emerging accessibility challenges and solutions. He is not especially active in the WAI community, but is a consistent lurker to the list and to the #a11y hashtag on Twitter. He is confident in his understanding of accessibility goals and the general application of ARIA and WCAG rules. He gets impatient however, when sorting through various interpretations and lack of consistent browser and AT support for what he feels are properly coded web applications.
Category: doer