It isn't Accessible without Usability: For a synergy between technology
and design
by
Michele Visciola, Etnoteam
Three topics
- On the relation between Accessibility and Usability
- On the role of automatic evaluation tools and evaluation of
Usability
- On the relation between providing technology and a culture of
Accessiblity and Usability
1: On the relation between Accessibility and Usability
- Developing for assistive technology does not resolve design
problems
- In particular, does not resolve Usability problems
- In solving access problems technology can enable, but ultimately design
determines the outcome
Typical usability problems when using assistive technology
- Auditory overload
- Loss of context during navigation
- Short-term memory overload
- Repetitive browsing patterns to avoid frustration and underutilization
of important features and/or contents in the site
Some typical factors encountered in good design with usability
methodology
- Organisation of the page and of HTML attributes (e.g. ALT,
LONGDESC)
- Navigation method (e.g. Organisation of the links in a page)
- How and when to enable skipping links or navigation bars
- Optimisation of time taken for navigating to find information
- Presentation of search results
- Use of tables; automatically inserted data; space between links; use of
acronyms and abbreviations; length of text; use of special characters
(punctuation, parentheses, mathematical functions)
Brief navigation demos with a screen reader
2: The role of Automatic Accessibility evaluation tools.
- Tools available today are more or less useful for identifying things
that are not accessible
- The automatic tools seem mostly oriented towards functioning with
screen readers. They don't pay much attention to other technology - not
even screen magnifiers
Example of things that automatic tools can't test
- Organisation of the page
- Presentation of the text
- Navigation methods
3: On the relation between providing technology and a culture of
Accessiblity and Usability
- Why are there always so many problems with interaction and problems in
the interface, as if there were no guidelines?
- Is it really enough to rely on the goodwill of webmasters and on
voluntary or special-interest groups to signal basic problems?
Conclusions
- There needs to be a real adherence to a culture of development based on
user testing
- It isn't enough to declare a site accessible: it has to be tested in
practice and documented with empirical evidence