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To keep up-to-date with upcoming events, news, training and accessibility articles, vist us online.
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Good afternoon <<First Name>>,
We hope you are keeping healthy and well this month- is it just me who gets excited for the end of financial year? I feel like it's another chance to make resolutions or changes for the rest of the year... like the first 6 months were a trial run, and the next 6 months are the ones that count. I might be alone in this! Either way, I am pretty sure we are ALL hoping the next 6 months are a LOT better than the first!
We have a great article this month for you, written by one of our Usability Analysts, Kristi, who specialises in Dyslexia and Dyscalculia. Enjoy!
- Emma Murray
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What's in a Font?
8th of June by Kristi Anderson-Mahady
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For many web developers, choosing fonts for their sites comes down to aesthetics, but for those with dyslexia, the fonts chosen can be the difference between being able to read a page or not.
There are two font families, serif, such as Times New Roman, and sans-serif, such as Arial. Serif fonts have small serifs or "tails" on the letters, these small tails, for dyslexics, often result in words becoming a confusing mess. Sans-serif fonts are, as the name suggests, lacking the serifs. San-serif fonts are a lot less confusing, although letters which are similar, b, d, p, q for example, can still be mixed up. The best of the sans-serif fonts to use are Courier, Helvetica, or Ariel. Cursive fonts, as well as italics for both serif and sans-serif fonts, are among the hardest for those with dyslexia to read, this can be an issue as cursive is a popular choice for headings as they look very nice.
OpenDyslexia, an open source font which weights the letters in such a way that similar letters cannot be confused for each other. Letter hopping (letters being interpreted in the wrong order) and line skipping can still occur with OpenDyslexic, it is a font which takes some time to get used to, and as with everything, isn't a fit for everyone. For those who choose to use OpenDyslexic, it is often a valuable tool. As someone who reads books every night, having the option to use OpenDyslexic on my Kindle app has meant I'm not re-reading sections I missed or reading things incorrectly. Using it on my computer for browsers has not been as smooth a process as many websites do not interact well with the add-on.
The video below is an example of what it is like to be dyslexic.
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This video contains no spoken words and shows a visual representation of what it it’s like to be dyslexic
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Recent News 
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White Paper Release for GAAD
To honour Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we released our white paper, “Digital Accessibility: Perceptions, Expectations and Reality” which is available free of charge from this page. This paper is the result of research conducted last year with both organisations and individuals in Australia and internationally. Organisations were surveyed to ask their perceptions of the importance of digital accessibility and the accessibility standards of their websites and other digital material. Individuals, both with and without disability, were asked about their chief issues with websites, applications etc., and what they felt of the current state of digital accessibility. The results of these surveys were then compiled and Web Key IT has produced this white paper showing the reality both in Australia and internationally. The research is unique in that it surveyed both groups at the same point of time, producing some very interesting results. We would like to thank all who participated in the research and invite everyone to download the paper free of charge. We look forward to hearing your feedback!
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Upcoming Events 
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Perth Web Accessibility & Inclusive Design Meetup
16th June 2020
Online- details here
7:30-9:00am
Read more about the Accessibility Meetup group
UXR Conference Anywhere
25th-26th June 2020
Online
COVID-19 response here
More information here
UX Australia
25th-26th August 2020
Melbourne, Australia
More information here
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