I started out studying experimental film and later interactive media at Hamburg’s School of Art (HfbK), then went to the School of Art & Design, Coventry, UK, on an MA course in Visual Graphics. I returned to Coventry to do a PhD there, building animated diagrams as an element in technical documentation. But during field work with Service Engineers at Rolls Royce Aeroengines in Derby I understood that it was more important to look at how a problem is structured and what range of resources a user actually needs to solve it. The diagrams were pretty, but not really usable. Working at a subsidiary of British Maritime Transport back in Germany, I was among other things tasked with building project websites and learned how to do that so they are accessible. This, and my former focus on usability, eventually led me to join the team at DIAS. There I managed the probably best known German web accessibility test procedure, BIK BITV-Test. This procedure closely follows WCAG and tries to break down reqirements into What? Why? and How? sections that help users understand the requirement and tell whether some content meets it. After working at DIAS for 10 years, I had the opportunity to become owner and MD 4 years ago. I have been Invited Expert of the W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group for about 12 years and try to contribute to working on the future version, WCAG 3.
All interview with Detlev:
