Charli-Jo Tyrer

Charli-Jo Tyrer

I help organisations create digital services that everyone can use: directly, with assistive technology, or by sending an agent.

What I do

Most accessibility work starts with a finished website and looks for faults. I start earlier, with what people come to an organisation to achieve and what it can actually do for them. From there I model the service, build it with coding agents, and test each journey from start to finish, with screen readers and with agents, until people can complete it and can prove that they did.

I have worked in computing and assistive technology for about forty years. I trained as a systems analyst in SSADM and Jackson Structured Programming, spent around thirty years in the charity sector, including at RNIB, and ran my own business training blind people to use technology. I am blind, and I test with a screen reader because that is how I use the web.

Three pieces of work

My practice rests on a principle, a method and a standard. Each can be adopted on its own.

The principle: Universal Digital Involvement

A service should be designed from the outset to be open to all people, and to the agents they authorise to act for them. Nobody is an exception requiring special accommodation, whether they arrive by screen, screen reader, voice, braille or agent. Involvement is not something we do for people who might otherwise be left out. It is a property of a well-designed service, and everyone is in it.

Read the Universal Digital Involvement proposal

The method: Agent-First Accessible Service Design

The method revives systems analysis for the age of agents. It looks at an organisation from the outside, separates what a service does from how it was built, models it around human intentions, and then builds and tests it. At its centre is the Completion Chain, six links that every journey must hold:

  1. Intention
  2. Understanding
  3. Authorisation
  4. Action
  5. Evidence
  6. Correction

Read about Agent-First Accessible Service Design

The standard: Zero Information Casualty

Zero Information Casualty (ZIC) is a web design specification. It makes sure that whatever a site publishes reaches every reader, whether a person, assistive technology or an agent a person sent, without meaning being lost on the way. It asks four questions: can they read it, is the person's reader allowed in, did it actually arrive, and did it survive being read?

Read about the Zero Information Casualty standard

How we could work together

Start with one journey. I look at your public website and services from the outside, with no logins, source code or hosting details needed, and reconstruct what your service actually does. Then I propose how one important journey could work for everyone, build a working prototype, and test it. If it is useful, we go further. If it is not, it has cost you nothing but a conversation.

I don't charge organisations for this work. My exploration is funded by people who sponsor it.

How I work

These are the standards I hold myself to when I look at an organisation's service, whether or not you've asked me to.

I look from the outside first. I start with your public website and services. I don't need logins, source code or hosting details, and I won't ask for them until you decide you want to go further.

I keep my analysis private. What I find about your service is for you, not for publication. I won't name your organisation, publish findings, or use your service as a case study without your agreement.

I come to you with something considered. I won't send you a running commentary while I'm still working things out. When I get in touch, it will be with findings I can stand behind and a clear question or offer.

I label prototypes for what they are. Anything I build to show how your service could work says plainly, at the top, that it isn't your website, that it was made from public information, and that nothing has been agreed.

I claim only what I can show. I say what I observed, what I've inferred, and what only you can tell me. If I don't know how something works behind the scenes, I'll say so rather than guess.

I write to you myself. Agents help me analyse and build. Anything I send you is in my own words, and I'm accountable for it.

You can say no. If you don't want to take things further, I'll delete what I made from your service and leave it there.

Get in touch

Email me at hello@charli-jo.com.