- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 13:59:11 +0000 (UTC)
- To: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Cc: HTML Accessibility Task Force <public-html-a11y@w3.org>, Roger Johansson <roger@456bereastreet.com>
On Sun, 6 Dec 2009, Laura Carlson wrote: > Ian wrote: > > Nobody has collected equivalent data showing summary="" is useful at > > improving accessibility in practice, > > Last month Roger Johansson asked on his blog, "Do you find table > summaries helpful?"[1]. and received three responses from screen reader > users. > [1] http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200911/do_you_find_table_summaries_helpful/ Interesting stuff. I've commented on the responses below, but I should first say that it is well-established that asking questions in usability studies leads to results that are dramatically biased towards a supportive answer (e.g. if we ask people in Google usability studies whether they'll like a particular feature we're adding, they'll almost universally say yes, even though objective studies of their behaviour can show that they do not use the feature at all, or rarely benefit from it when they do). I would not be at all surprised if the same kind of non-self-aware reporting affected questions of this nature also. Also, it's important to remember that nobody (as far as I know) is arguing that table explanations are undesireable -- the question is only one of what markup mechanism is most likely to lead to the highest rate of accessible tables overall. In other words, not "should we have summary information", but "how can we maximise the number of users who can make use of tables". Now, notwithstanding my admission that the results are likely not ideal for drawing conclusions from, the comments do lead to some interesting conclusions: - comment 2 suggests that we should just make the explanatory text be part of the captions - comment 3 agrees that explanatory text is helpful, but doesn't make any assertion regarding how they should be presented - comment 4 reports that the quality of explanatory text varies wildly, and suggests that better education of authors might be the way forward, without making any assertion regarding what the markup should be (Only two of the comments were actually from screen reader users, by the way; the first was reporting from memory the results of another study.) > Some questions: > > Would it in-scope for this task force to do similar survey of screen > reader users on a wider scale? Would such a survey help bring this issue > to resolution? If so, are there any accessibility task force members > willing to collaborate on such a survey? Could the W3C WBS survey tool > be used for such a survey? I'm not sure that a survey would be the best way of collecting data about the best way to improve accessibility. I think a better way to get data about this would be a set of usability studies of Web authors followed by double-blind studies of the pages they write. For example, take six to nine Web developers, and give them the task of marking up some Web pages that include particularly complex data tables in an accessible way that is still aesthetically pleasing to them. The developers would be split into three groups, one being given instructions on using summary="", one being given instructions on writing paragraphs around the table, and one being given no instruction at all. Then, take the resulting pages, and bring in six to nine users of assistive technologies, and randomly give each one some of the pages created, and ask them to fill in a questionnaire based on the data in the table. Then, a researcher who is not aware of any of these events is asked to "grade" the questionaires, and determine which show a better understanding of the underlying data. This I think would most effectively demonstrate whether one method or another is better. I think it would be fantastic if we could do this. If people agree that this is a reasonable thing to do, I might (emphasis on "might") be able to get the resources to do this early next year. -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Sunday, 6 December 2009 13:59:40 UTC