23: A Stark Difference in Design
Hey! Welcome to this week’s Stark Difference in Design. Last week’s Edition No. 22 had a 47% open rate. The most popular link was the Designing for accessibility is not that hard blog post. 💌
Tidbits
+ We need to talk about accessibility on chatbots
Here’s a question we don’t hear often: What happens when a blind person wants to use your chatbot?
+ Blacks Who Design
Blacks Who Design highlights all of the inspiring Black designers in the industry. The goal is to inspire new designers, encourage people to diversify their feeds, and discover amazing individuals to join your team.
We were so excited to see this when it launched. You no longer have an excuse about it being difficult to find PoC to hire for your role or speak at your events.
+ The 2017 Website Recap of Accessibility Lawsuits
We speak a lot about the cost of not injecting accessible and inclusive design into your process from the beginning. Part of that cost is how expensive it is to fix and it’s usually following a lawsuit. We love data and statistics though, so we figured we’d share.
2017 saw an unprecedented number of website accessibility lawsuits filed in federal and state courts, and few courts willing to grant early motions to dismiss. Plaintiffs were very busy in 2017 filing ADA Title III lawsuits alleging that public accommodations’ websites are not accessible to individuals with disabilities. Here is our brief recap of the 2017 website accessibility lawsuit numbers, major developments, and our thoughts for 2018.
For bookworms
+ Thinking in Systems
Some of the biggest problems facing the world―war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation―are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.
What’s new from Stark
+ New: Deep linking for Adobe XD
We added deep linking to the @AdobeXD download button on our site. It now opens up XD (if you have it, otherwise it’ll ask if you want to download) and then go straight to our spot in the plugin store.
+ Tip: Did you know you can scroll in the colorblind simulator?
Want a better view of the entire design? Once you've zoomed in, hover over the image window and scroll around to get a better look at all areas of your design.
+ Update: Stark says goodbye to Facebook
A little over a week ago we initiated the deletion of our Facebook account in general and for support. Here’s why:
We haven’t put a lot of effort into our communication on Facebook due to an uncertainty about whether or not we want to support Facebook with more traffic driven. Though Facebook's practices may not impact us directly, we certainly don't want to aid in its fair share of data collection -- especially given Facebook isn't the only major social media platform for technology and design.
Now, as our communication, content creation, and social sharing increases across the board, we’ve decided to delete our Facebook account for Stark before it picks up steam as a means for communication and support.
+ New: Intercom chat bot for Stark’s support
Because we’re no longer using Facebook’s chat bot for support, we needed a solid solution that could handle the volume of conversations, suggestions and questions that are coming in, in an efficient and streamlined way. You can find it right on our website if and when you need it.
+ New: Stark’s Help Center / Knowledge-base
In addition to the chat support from Intercom, we also kickstarted our help center. It’ll be a collection of articles or most frequently asked questions that you can reference if and when you need it.
Liked this newsletter? Let us know. And we’re always talking shop on Twitter @getstarkco or in our community chat.
–Team Stark