OTF’s Secure Usability and Accessibility Lab offers secure usability and user-interface assistance to Internet freedom and digital security tools to help them recognise and solve usability challenges that hampered the adoption of those tools in repressive contexts.

Open source software projects aim to help people around the world - such as activists, journalists, and everyday citizens - to communicate with better privacy and security. However, many of these software development teams are in need of assistance to make tools that are truly usable and accessible in various contexts across diverse communities. Lack of usability and accessibility results in slow adoption of these technologies and increases the gap between tech makers and users. Additionally, misunderstandings of tool functionalities can potentially lead to a false sense of privacy and security. OTF’s Secure Usability and Accessibility Lab offers secure usability and user-interface assistance to Internet freedom and digital security tools to help them recognise and solve usability challenges that hampered the adoption of those tools in repressive contexts. We partner with service providers to provide the following services as an in-kind resource to OTF-funded projects and other Internet freedom technologies: Service #1: Secure Usability and Accessibility Coaching Guidance for OTF-approved and other Internet freedom projects to help improve their usability and accessibility capacity. This is to help you understand secure usability and accessibility to better help you plan and develop your technology. Service #2: Secure Usability and Accessibility Consultation Consultations to help OTF-approved and other Internet freedom projects increase their capacity to address the most difficult usability and accessibility problems they face in a secure and privacy-preserving manner. These consultation services include research, design, and implementation. Service #3: Secure Usability and Accessibility Audits Secure usability and/or accessibility audits for OTF-approved and other Internet freedom technology to provide input such as: assessment of the usability and/or accessibility of the tool in relation to standards and best practices;highlight problems that need to be fixed and suggest areas of improvement; analyze and identify any pitfalls that might make it difficult for users under threat to use your tool; help tools better understand the needs of their users and articulate them in the design of their tools. To help the advancement of all communities and the accumulation of practical knowledge through peer-to-peer learning, the outputs of all coaching, consultation and audits will be publicly documented upon completion.