Andrew Hick

Accessibility and test person, Bath, UK. He/him.

I help make technology work for everyone. I also make things out of pixels, code, pens and bits of string.

This site includes my professional portfolio, hobbies and the bits in between. All opinions are my own.

Work

I'm a certified senior accessibility specialist, working at the UK Government Digital Service, to monitor public sector websites and apps for accessibility.

Creative

Mainly visual hobbies.

Featured things

Blog post: How mobile apps undergo accessibility monitoring

An overview of the challenges we've faced applying WCAG to mobile apps, along with a case study.

Fluffy cat looking at accessibility settings on a phone for blog post on mobile app testing

Video: What WCAG 2.2 means for UK public sector websites and apps

A presentation with Chris Heathcote covering the latest draft Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (version 2.2), and what public sector organisations need to do about them.

A slide demonstrating the accessibility of carousel controls

Homestead

This made me think about order and chaos, but which part is the order and which part is the chaos? Drawn in Lyme Regis, 2023 with Sakura Micron pens 003, 005 and 01.

A tidy conservatory with intricate floor tiles and minimal furniture, looking out onto trees, rosebushes and hints of nearby houses. There are three blackbirds just outside one window.

Mucha window

Cross stitch of Alphonse Mucha's stained glass window in St Vitus Cathedral, Prague. I was blown away by the colours radiating from the centre and decided to plan my biggest cross stitch yet as a pandemic project. Two years and five months later (life also happened) it's finally finished.

A stitched gothic window with various Jesus-y and saintly things happening across 42 panels (there are quite a few haloes and people looking authoritative). Radiating from the centre, the colours are mainly yellow and orange, whereas the outside is more dark blue.

Here's the plan and the back of it:

Each stitch of the stained glass window represented by a colour symbol along with the threads used An arch-shaped jumble of multicoloured threads

And steps from the making of:

Part of the window on a laptop screen with the stitches starting to be written on graph paper Bottom of the plan showing the word MUCHA and the first stitches in dark blue First dark blue stitches with panel outlines, outside on a sunny day Lighter brown stitches added Light cyan stitches added Orange stitches added Yellow stitches added Complete window without the outlines

Video: Why would you want to exclude anyone?

A brief appearance on the Government Digital Service Twitter account to talk about our accessibility work for Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2023. You may need to be signed into Twitter to view this.

Andrew Hick, a white beardy man in a stripy T-shirt, talking about accessibility

Presentation: accessibility doesn't have to be hard

An accessibility presentation for South West User Experience (SWUX) in October 2022.

The talk encourages you to bake accessibility into your teams, discussing different mindsets and mythbusting. It then gives practical advice on how to test, and building accessibility into your websites upfront.

A white tab symbol on a blue background

If you take one thing away from it, it's to TabTabTabTabTab.

Around 50 people attended and we had time for a live audit at the end.

Thanks so much to everyone who attended and joined in, the hosts Real Time Consultants and the organisers, Indu and Steve.

SWUX is based in Bristol and anyone can join via Meetup.

Chrysanthemum colour chart

An updated chart showing all 4,096 colours with 3-digit codes, from #000 (black) to #fff (white). Click/tap for a larger version.

Colour chart featuring 216 chrysanthemum flowers arranged into a hexagonal shape by colour

The centre of each chrysanthemum flower is one of 216 main colours with up to 24 tints each in the petals, plus 2 more either side of the centre. A small dot means that a tint doesn't exist. For example, red has no pink tint.

The three digits represent red, green and blue, where 10-15 are written as a-f. Example: soft yellow is #cc3 (12 red, 12 green, 3 blue).

Use the Tints flower to identify each tint and work out its code. Example: soft yellow's magenta tint is in the 10 o'clock position closest to the 'light soft tan' flower. The tint's code is: #cc3 → plus minus plus (+−+) → #db4.

Change a short code to a long code by repeating each digit, for example, #db4 = #ddbb44.

The colour names on the chart are written in black or white depending on which has better contrast for web content accessibility guidelines.

The same information is presented in an accessible table on the colour page.

Pandora on PICO-8

Get through 16 levels in as few moves as possible while looking for your long lost socky. Defeat your nemesis.

Play pixelly cat game

Everything

Cat face from blog about mobile app accessibility monitoring A stylised sun with 24 rays in the style of a lithograph, with a child's slightly smiling face A large capital letter A drawn in a classical style, with gentle curves and thin slab serifs Carousel controls to illustrate WCAG 2.2 Cup of tea with blackbirds outside the window Cross stitch Jesus Tab symbol Green chrysanthemum shaped colour swatch 1.1.1 Ammonite Flamingo head Squirrel on a chutney jar Cross stitch geological map A letter having its contrast checked Sparrow on seaside rock Train lines in three colours bird in industrial vent Concentric letters spelling CDDO pixellated black cat Drawn figures in a park Sketch of people chatting cypress logo The word 'carrier' from a gov.uk page Art deco clock with kaleidoscope effect Logo of a girl in the mountains Pen and ink drawing of Cambridge rooftops Pen and ink drawing of St Ives from above The words 'test standards' from GitHub Drawing of Andrew and Victoria Cross stitch golden spiral Black cat face Gold nodule The word Outré Old button saying Press A pixellated heart from the game Xzap Train shelf and reflected face The word 'waste' from a gov.uk page Scribbly cat Roman Baths Figures on Weymouth beach prototype kit mind map with bonus Paddington Bear Wedding rings Heptonstall church drawing automation tester mind map Figures in Moorlands Park, Bath designer induction mind map Angel Square drawing, Bury St Edmunds writing for gov.uk mindmap Sprites from the game Xzap Cross hatched letter B World cup 2018 wallchart Bath map Cross stitch Keepsake Imagetek logo Bristol map Manchester map manage your water abstraction interaction design mind map square circuit puzzle light cubes puzzle Testing GOV.UK Cloudy cube puzzle Hexagonal hexagon puzzle Message from above puzzle Escher cross stitch Penguin puzzle Cheese maze The word Cameras in several fonts Heptonstall church drawing Hexagonal web safe colour palette Lazarus boys logo Leon concert hall drawing Word icons Louis Theroux drawing sign up for flood warnings Hexagonal Escher waterfall Escher's pixel art relativity