Jacqui Shadforth

Designing for everyone means starting with someone. Even the most well-structured learning will fall flat if it doesn’t meet people where they are. One thing we’ve learned is that you can’t assume shared knowledge across your audience, especially in large, cross-functional teams. 🎯 In one recent training programme, we had to create materials that worked for seasoned leads and people encountering the training concepts for the first time. Here’s what helped us create inclusive, accessible content that stuck: • Starting from foundational knowledge, with all jargon explained immediately 🧾 • Layering the content to support both confidence-building and deep dives. 🏗️ • Providing examples that supported doing, not just knowing. 💪 We also designed a dual-track structure: e-learning for foundational knowledge and hands-on workshops for practical application, giving people a choice in how they learned. Real inclusion in learning design means supporting the newest learner as much as the most experienced. #InclusiveLearning #FromFirstPrinciples #CapabilityBuilding

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When we prioritise accessible user experiences, we're not just helping people with disabilities, we're creating better, more accessible experiences for everyone. Great UX is inclusive UX and this guide will show you how to build a more human centred experience.

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🧩 User Liaison News – April 📍 This April, members of the DAFNI team- Tom Kirkham (Science Lead), Kyle Stevenson (User Liaison Lead), and Elizabeth Mamchits (Software Engineer)-travelled to Brighton to take part in a joint Workshop and Hackathon with DISKAH (Digital Skills in the Arts and Humanities Network). 🤝 This highly collaborative event brought together participants to explore how Arts and Humanities data can be combined with infrastructure datasets using the DAFNI platform and local computing resources. 💡 Using sources such as the Archaeological Data Service and the University of Oxford’s Seshat Global History Database, attendees applied modern techniques to integrate diverse datasets in innovative ways. 🌍 The focus? Understanding how to better protect the UK’s cultural heritage, exploring challenges such as flooding, landslides, and the impact of transport networks on heritage sites. 🔬 This work highlights the power of interdisciplinary collaboration-bringing together data, technology, and expertise to address complex, real-world challenges. 🔗 Learn more: Archaeological Data Service: https://lnkd.in/gRDXti_2 Seshat Database: https://seshat-db.com #DAFNI #UserLiaison #DataScience #CulturalHeritage #Interdisciplinary #Research #Innovation #Collaboration

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Think you need to be “mathy” to work in tech? Welcome to Season 18 of Spilling the T - we're unpacking the myth with Dunelm, discussing the real range of tech careers, and why humanities skills can be an advantage in front-end engineering. Hit play & listen ▶️ https://bit.ly/3Vym5G4 #SpillingTheT #Podcast #WomenInTech #CareerChanges Emma Harrison Holly L. Conor Morgan

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We go live in a few hours. If your organisation wants to: ✅ Reduce user stress ✅ Improve digital dignity ✅ Embed emotional safety into UX Today’s Inclusive Insights is for you. 🎟 Register: https://lnkd.in/eaZv3w_E Checklist included🎥 Replay sent after #BeyondCompliance #AccessibleUX #DigitalAccessibility #MentalHealthInDesign

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Every dev has a favourite AI tool, but what about our engineers? 🤔 Find out in Episode 1 of Ask Our Engineers. #AskOurEngineers #TechSeries

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Job boards flood you with unverified CVs. Traditional hiring cycles average 44 days, before productivity even begins. You can't really tell if a QA is the right fit, until it's too late. And your dev team ends up doing QA. Again. Sound familiar? This isn't bad luck. This is what happens when QA hiring has no proper system behind it. No structured assessment of real capability. No alignment check before the offer. No way to know if they can actually handle your product's complexity. The good news? These are all solvable problems, if you know what to fix first. 👇 Which of these hits closest to home for you right now? 1️⃣ Unverified CVs from job boards 2️⃣ Hiring cycles that take too long 3️⃣ Can't tell if a QA is the right fit 4️⃣ Dev team absorbing QA work Drop your number in the comments. I'd love to know what founders are dealing with most. 💙

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With International Women’s Day coming up this weekend, we thought it was a great time to sit down with Caoimhe, our Lead Principal Consultant in Software Engineering. 💜 After years of working with incredible women in tech, she shares her take on the current state of the market, where things are improving, and where there’s still room to do better. We chatted about her biggest career achievements, her advice for women stepping into leadership, what she’s seen help women excel in engineering careers, and what companies should focus on when it comes to the future of diversity. A few things she said that really stood out to us: 💬 “You’ll probably never feel 100% ready.” 💬 “Leadership is rarely about knowing everything.” 💬 “Take on the tasks that feel beyond your comfort zone.” 💬 “The companies that get it right build cultures where people can actually thrive.” It’s a great read, full of honest insights from someone who works closely with engineers and hiring teams across the market. Take 2 minutes and give it a read 👉

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Emma Burstow never set out to join HQ. She set out to contribute. 💙 From her first Fundamentals course in 2015 to speaking at Codegarden, co-hosting a community podcast, reviewing pull requests, and mentoring new contributors, Emma lived and breathed Umbraco long before she had an Umbraco.com email address. So when she joined HQ as a Developer Advocate, it wasn’t a shift away from the community. It was a new way to serve it. Today, Emma helps others get the most out of their open source journey while making sure the voices that shaped Umbraco from the outside are heard clearly on the inside. For enterprises evaluating open source, it’s a powerful reminder that when your product is built with and by the people who use it, you don’t just get better software. You get faster feedback, deeper adoption, and contributors who already feel responsible for making it work.

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What happens when we don’t design for vulnerable customers? As we’ve explored in recent posts, designing for vulnerability isn’t theoretical - it has real-world consequences. Our new Leave No One Behind report brings this into sharp focus, showing how easily customers can be excluded when products aren’t built with their lived experiences in mind. It’s a reminder that accessibility isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the foundation of fairness. On page 8, the report revisits the Domino’s accessibility lawsuit - a stark reminder that excluding customers is not just poor design; it’s a legal and reputational risk. A blind customer simply couldn’t complete an online order because the app wasn’t accessible. The courts ruled in his favour. The lesson for financial services? Accessibility isn’t optional “Another channel” is not an acceptable workaround Bias and oversight in AI can compound exclusion at scale As our Real Folk Panel member Sassy warns: “If you think you’re accessible, check again and have the people onboard who know.” AI has the power to transform lives, but only if fairness is built in, not bolted on.

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