Re: Action item: why structure is an accessibility issue

CM:
Structured content is important for users with disabilities who have to use 
serial media" such as screen readers, or highly magnified screens. Reading 
content that doesn't have structure is much slower for such users.

How much? This is a brief thought experiment in the absence of proper data:

I can look at approximately 1000 words in a glance, pick out the headings 
and links in under a second, and read them in about 1-5 seconds (lower for 
a page of actual content than for something like search engine output). 
Using a fast speech synthesis system that takes about two minutes. If 
navigating content by recognising these things is 5 percent of using the 
web, that makes it between about 2 and 6 times as slow overall.

MRK:
I agree, if the page has some visual structure you are not looking so much 
1000 or any number of words but the structure itself and skipping to 
content that looks potentially interesting, reading titles or highlighted 
words, looking images or tables, finding a navigation bar, reading the 
beginning or end paragraph, searching info of the writer etc. Having to 
read most of the 1000 words before finding the writer or some other info is 
pretty slow when we can see almost directly that it is at the end of the 
page. Havings things available visually in front of us frees our memory too 
as we can always check easily what else is available and we don't have to 
memorize commands to go to places.

Exact calculations of speed differences are difficult because it depends on 
how much can be skipped, how it is done (typing shortcut commands, looking 
them up from a menu etc.) and the reading speeds. However, it is easy to 
see there is an effect.

Some visual features tell as pretty fast what is the writer name, a 
navigation bar, an advertisement, or a title. It would be nice to have 
consistent metadata for more of these structures when they cannot be seen 
and easy ways to skip to them and back. Also we could have some help in 
memorizing what structures e.g. titles or links have not been read yet etc.

Marja

Received on Wednesday, 15 August 2001 04:17:21 UTC