Improving the accessibility of a peer-led mental health support app

To address the mental health crisis in the United States, the team at Institute for Media Innovation at the Moody College of Communication adopted a design thinking approach to better understand the barriers to accessing more viable forms of care. Among other things, the team learned that young people are leading the way to a mental health care future marked by the peer-to-peer health experience and inventive uses of digital platforms. Their research engages a fundamental question: how do we design more compelling tele-health experiences for humans? In this project, IMI is transforming primary research with mental health professionals, community-based health organisations, and young people to design a digital platform that points to a tech-enhanced future of mental health care marked by social support, de-stigmatisation, and behavioural activation. A mental health app may not fulfil its intended purpose without weighing accessibility in design. In order to ensure that this digital platform performs the same functions, achieves the same outcomes, and requires the same amount of time and effort for those with or without disabilities, my work centres around improving the accessibility of the platform. I am in the process of reviewing existing relevant literature, understanding Apple and Google's human interfaces guidelines for accessibility, exploring different accessibility testing plug-ins by Figma to be able to evaluate the current mobile app prototype's accessibility. The deliverable of the project would be a accessibility design framework to guide future work.