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Good morning to you, <<First Name>>!
Welcome to this month's newsletter! This month, you'll be hearing from Kristi Anderson-Mahady, one of our very talented Usability Analysts.
 Hi, my name is Kristi, and I have been with Web Key IT as a website analysist since July 2018. I live with my husband and our 2 dogs and 3 lorikeets. My area of study was Environmental Science and Conservation Wildlife Biology but unfortunately, I am unable to work in the field and so am now studying a Diploma of Software Development, something I have had an interest in for a while. I have a wide variety of interests, from animals, crafting, reading, and gaming, to karate, hiking, and travel, among just a few things to be honest. I have been lucky enough to travel extensively and see some truly amazing things.
Dyslexia & Dyscalculia
My area of analysis is Dyslexia and Dyscalculia (also known as Math Dyslexia), something I was only diagnosed with at the age of 30. Before working with Web Key IT, I thought that dealing with websites that were not suitably laid out for dyslexia was really my issue to deal with, not something that a web developer should have in mind. I now have a much greater appreciation for those who take disabilities into consideration when they are designing their websites.
Common issues, related to Dyslexia, I find are websites that have a lot of text and not a lot of white space, this can often be very confronting and anxiety causing for those of us with Dyslexia. Font sizes and styles also need to be taken into consideration, san serif, such as Calibri, are a better choice over serif, such as Times New Roman, as the end strokes of a serif font make is harder for people with Dyslexia to read. Nearly all websites I use interact poorly with the add-ons I use to help me understand things better, such as OpenDyslexic, which converts text to the OpenDyslexic font, and EasyRead, which increases the spaces between letters and word, which means I am often turning off my aids as it makes things even harder!
Dyscalculia is much more unknown than dyslexia, but it functions much the same. Anyone with Dyscalculia will struggle with long strings of numbers, jumbling up the numbers. Well- spaced numbers help in breaking down the string, reducing the chance of reading numbers out of order. Many people with Dyscalculia also have trouble with left and right, and so will find written directions confusing, and so it is advisable to always include a map. There is also the issue with Captcha when it requires the user to perform basic mathematics, someone with Dyscalculia will experience anxiety, I personally have used a calculator because I don’t trust my mental math capabilities even with something basic like 3+6.
It is very easy for people with Dyslexia and Dyscalculia to experience anxiety with everyday web browsing. It is very easy for someone with these disabilities to look at a website that doesn’t take them into consideration and decide to browse elsewhere.
Taking these disabilities into considering when developing a web page, and including them in seamless browsing helps reduce any anxiety experienced. Developing a website to include these disabilities, rather than exclude, means less anxiety to the users and more retention of website information.
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Recent News 
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May 2019 Certificate Course
REGISTRATIONS CLOSING TODAY 5PM AWST
We are pleased to once again offer our 5 week Certificate in Digital Accessibility!
This certificate level program covers all major aspects of Digital Accessibility over five one-day sessions on consecutive weeks. The course will be held every Wednesday in May at ATI Mirage on Hay Street in the Perth CBD. More details are available on our Training Page or you can contact us at training@webkeyit.com for cost and the discount rate for multiple participants from your organisation.
ACS members receive a discount of $50 from the course cost and will receive 12 PD hours for the CT or CP levels.
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From the Director's Chair 
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March is the time when we all seem to be in the thick of planning for the next financial year. We would like to remind you that this an ideal time to embed digital accessibility into your business processes. When we make accessibility a vital part of ‘business as usual’, it is easier to gain the buy-in of our various organisational stakeholders. We would encourage you to look at our Accessibility Partner Plan or contact us for more details. The Partner Plan is fully customised to your needs and could be used for:
- mystery shopping – we can test different pages each month to keep everyone on their toes – always knowing that content can be tested
- regular testing for new content/pages
- consulting during development or just being a resource or your internal staff
- training sessions – groups can be from individual to 12 per session or even seminar-style if you prefer
- any combination of our services you wish
One of the great benefits of the Partner Plan is the ability to set your monthly spending on digital accessibility and spread the cost over the year. There are silver, gold and platinum levels and the service bundles are substantially discounted to provide further benefit to our customers. Contact us soon for more information on how you can put this into your next financial year budget.
If you are planning on a new website or a makeover of the present website, please remember to include budgeting for accessibility testing and consulting to save you the work and expense of making changes after the work has been completed. It is always much less expensive to plan for accessibility than to try to remediate after development or in a rush to make a launch date.
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Upcoming Events 
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ACS WA April Branch Forum
23rd April, 2019
Adina Apartment Hotel, Perth WA
Dr. Vivienne Conway is speaking on "Accessibility IS Innovation"
Register here
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2019 Print Disability Round Table Conference
4th-7th of May, 2019
South Brisbane, QLD
More information about this event here
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16th International Web for All Conference
13-15th of May, 2019
San Francisco, USA
More information about W4A here
More information about WWW'19 here
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Disability at Work Conference
20th-21st of June, 2019
Adelaide, SA
More information about this event here
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Are we friends yet? 
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If you haven't already, take a look at our Facebook page for daily updates and some excellent accessibility articles and resources, there really is a lot on there. We also have a Twitter feed, as well as LinkedIn. All these links are below for future reference, so have a click around, and share this with your friends.
Please do remember to take a moment to look at our website and as always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts, comments and any feedback you may have!
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