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Smart Citizens Enabling Resilient Neighbourhoods

Smart Citizens Enabling Resilient Neighbourhoods (SCERN) is a research project aimed at developing digital social tools and platforms to help municipalities understand how differences in neighbourhood environments affect community resilience.

This case study is available to download in PDF format here.

To support their mission of maximum inclusivity, Open worked with the Health Equity Systems Interventions (HESI) Research Group at Wilfred Laurier University’s Centre for Community Research, Learning and Action to support the implementation of accessibility principles, and facilitated the testing of a mobile application by neurodivergent individuals to identify cognitive accessibility improvements.

The Problem

App developers aren’t always trained on inclusive design principles. To be as accessible as possible, the HESI Research Group needed to ensure their community-geared digital tools took into consideration the needs of a neurodiverse user group.

The Solution

Open facilitated the testing of a digital app by a group of ten neurodivergent Cognitive Accessibility Advisors to identify opportunities to improve usability. Open’s Accessibility Specialists also provided training sessions on cognitive accessibility and accessible technology development to the app design team.

Services provided:

  • Education & Training
  • Usability & Accessibility Testing
  • Plain Language Adaptation

The Outcome

Open facilitated two accessibility training sessions and 120 cumulative hours of usability testing by Cognitive Accessibility Advisors. Collectively, Advisors’ lived experience enabled Open to not just identify accessibility deficiencies, but recommend a set of usability improvements the app developers felt assured would effectively address them.

“Thank you for helping make SCERN a success! Based on your feedback, we have made a number of improvements.”

~ Christopher Macdonald Hewitt, Ph.D., Research Associate, Smart Citizens Enabling Resilient Neighbourhoods

Testimonials

We have been working with Open for over a year and it has been a pleasure; Open offers a professional, fast, efficient, detailed, and conscientious path to engaging neurodiverse communities as advisors for corporate related accessibility projects.

Nadia Hamilton, CEO, Magnusmode

We work with Open in order to develop a cognitively accessible medication management application. They provided us with a wealth of expertise regarding cognitive disabilities and accessibility while ensuring we received input directly from persons with cognitive disabilities.

Dinis Cabral, CEO, JLG Health Solutions

It is always a pleasure to work with you and your students! They were quite remarkable throughout the process. They were available, accessible and certainly their report today was spot on.

Caroline Granger, Director, Valor & Solutions

Our work with Open has led to meaningful improvements in accessibility. Their process identified unintentional barriers in our materials, and the revisions have made our resources more effective for individuals with diverse cognitive needs.

Lynn Martin, PhD, Professor, Department of Health Sciences, Lakehead University

Thank you for helping make SCERN a success! Based on your feedback, we have made a number of improvements.

Christopher Macdonald Hewitt, Ph.D.