Am I still included? Communicating with different audiences

On October 15th 2008, Katie Grant from Raincharm is appearing as one of three speakers at a prestigious evening event hosted by the London Executive of Communicators in Business. Aimed at writers, designers and business communications strategists, the evening will provide a unique opportunity for business professionals to debate the issues surrounding access and inclusion. Katie will speak alongside Peter Mills, client partner at The Team, the UK's leading brand communications agency. Stating the case from a legal perspective will be Giles Crown –Head of Media, Brands and Technology at Lewis Silkin.

For further details and bookings please go to
http://www.raincharm.com/assets/cib_15_oct.pdf or email brenda@cib.uk.com

The event will be held on:
Wednesday 15 October 2008, 6pm, Royal Bank of Scotland
Premier Place, 2 1/2 Devonshire Square, London EC2M 4BA

HCI Conference - Liverpool 2008

The Human Computer Interaction (HCI) conference is an international gathering of researchers, practitioners and students, hosted this year by Liverpool John Moores University. HCI 2008 is the 22nd British HCI conference, one of Europe's largest and longest running HCI conferences.

This year the theme was culture, creativity and interaction - a title which attracted a diverse and internationally renowned group of speakers and presenters. Raincharm Communications were privileged to be part of this experience, presenting a workshop entitled 'Designing for people who do not read easily'. Leading the workshop team was Caroline Jarrett, a leading usability expert and Professor William Wong, a leading research professional from Middlesex University. Workshop attendees came from a rich and varied background - one guy flew from the Amazon in Brazil to share his expertise!

Position papers were presented on a number of subjects including how to design Easy Read materials for people with learning disabilities, designing for people with visual field defects and designing for people with low literacy levels. Each member of the group had an opportunity to comment on presentations with a view to sharing expertise and exchanging resource materials.

The results of the session were drawn into a matrix which will be taken forward and used to evidence some of the findings. The group discovered that even though we all working in quite different areas, as researchers and practitioners, there is a strong commonality of experience. We all agreed that designing for people who do not read easily is of huge importance and will take this work further.

To find out more about the group's work and findings please visit our wiki at:

http://designtoread.editme.com/Home

A paper and workshop will be presented at the OZCHI conference in Cairns later this year.