InkLink Overhaul

Our overhaul of InkLink includes accessibility features such as text-to-speech for UI, easy three key navigation, speech-to-text note-taking, and text/note translation, ensuring optimal inclusivity.

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TEAM MEMBERS:

  • Jeffrey Wang
  • Ayan Singal
  • August Zilakovs

Inspiration

This project was built for the WDS Overhaul competition, and our focus throughout the process was to think critically about what practical features someone with accessibility needs would appreciate, and we tried our best to integrate some of those into a simple, warm user interface to provide an easy-to-use interface that is snappy, elegant, and accessible.

What it does

InkLink follows the simple idea of creating a note-taking and note-sharing app, but its crown jewel lies in the accessibility features it has, and that's what we leaned in on most.

How we built it

The provided code-base was implemented with plain HTML/CSS and vanilla JS. Our team was most familiar with ReactJS, but it was refreshing to return to our roots and play around with vanilla again. We originally implemented a back-end and a front-end, but for demoing purposes we will show how the front-end functions, the code for the back-end remains in our repository.

Challenges we ran into

Less than 36 hours, and so much to do. Challenges were welcome and feared at the same time, we struggled with trying to find a way to implement an effective speech-to-text formula and to make sure our code was as DRY as possible when it came to re-using scripts written in JavaScript. Thinking critically about the layout and design of our pages was a new challenge too once we factored in how all of it would affect our accessibility level. Implementing easy keyboard navigation was another challenge mainly because of the difference in how different browsers handled it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of our teammates got extremely sick on Friday night, which left just two of us to complete this project. We were more than ready to rise to the challenge and we're proud of what we've accomplished.

  • Snappy and clean UI
  • Keyboard Navigation
  • Easy translation
  • Speech-to-text and text-to-speech are some of the biggest hurdles we were proud of having conquered!

What we learned

Collaboration. Always #1, invaluable lesson. Additionally, we learnt the importance of accessibility in web development, best practices to ensure its presence and what features make the biggest practical differences. Having to implement so much in a relatively short amount of time has no doubt sharpened all of our coding skills, and given us a lot of valuable coding/deadline handling experience.

What's next for InkLink Overhaul

There's so much more to be added to the Overhaul, we already have an AWS MySQL solution for storing collaborative and individual notes in addition to user data that just needs to be linked to the front-end, so that would be our first next move. Immediately following this our next goal would be to bring InkLink to mobile and desktop native systems, in addition to adding even more accessibility options like sign language support.

(Please note: The GitHub link below might be set to private when you view it, this is because our teammate had to be hospitalized and didn't have access to his computer. In the event that you are reviewing this and it's still set to private, please contact us and we'll make sure you can view our code, thanks!)

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