170147_1.html (fwd)

ran accross this today, says we need to do a lot more work

Bob

---------- Forwarded message ----------
   Wednesday October 17, 8:13 am Eastern Time
   
  Press Release
  
   SOURCE: Nielsen Norman Group
   
New Report Quantifies Web Usability for People with Disabilities

  Nielsen Norman Group to Release Findings From Usability Study With People
  With Low Vision, No Vision or Motor Impairments
  
   SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 17, 2001--There is a movement to
   make the Web open to everyone, including people with disabilities. But
   making a website technically accessible does not necessarily make it
   easy to use. In the first major study to observe Web usage by people
   with disabilities, usability expert Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman
   Group (NNG) found that web usability was three to six times better for
   non-disabled people than for people with low vision, no vision or
   motor impairment. In a report entitled ``Beyond ALT Text: Making the
   Web Easy to Use for Users with Disabilities,'' co-authors Nielsen and
   NNG director of research Kara Pernice Coyne present their findings and
   75 design guidelines to improve web usability for people with
   disabilities. The 178-page report will be released Oct. 21 at the User
   Experience 2001 conference in Washington D.C. and available to
   download for $125 at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility.
   Coyne, who led the study, will present a seminar on the topic at User
   Experience 2001.
   
   ``People with disabilities embrace the Internet for the opportunities
   it provides them to do things they couldn't do before, like read the
   daily newspaper,'' said Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman
   Group, ``Still, the Web is far from fulfilling its potential to serve
   users with disabilities. Inaccessible and unusable sites abound, even
   sites that are theoretically accessible have low usability for people
   with disabilities.''
   
   To measure the magnitude of usability problems for people with
   disabilities, Nielsen Norman Group conducted a study in the United
   States and Japan. The 104 users who participated in the study included
   users with low vision, no vision, or motor impairment and a control
   group of people without disabilities. Assistive technologies such as
   screen readers, Braille devices and screen magnifiers were used.
   
   In part of the study, American users with and without disabilities
   were asked to perform the same four tasks:
    1)  Information retrieval: Find the average temperature in Dallas,
        TX in January;

    2)  Buy an item: Janet Jackson's CD "All for You" from Target's
        website;

    3.) Information retrieval: Find a bus departing O'Hare airport to
        a specific address in Chicago using the Transit Chicago
        website;

    4)  Compare and contrast: Find the best mutual fund satisfying
        certain criteria on Schwab's website.

   Following are the results:
     * Task completion rate: Screen reader users were able to complete
       the tasks given to them 12.5% of the time; screen magnifier users
       21.4% of the time; control group 78% of the time.
     * Time on a task (min:sec): Screen reader users spent 16:34 on task;
       screen magnifier users spent 15:26 on task; control group 7:14 on
       task.
     * Errors (average across all tasks): Screen reader users 2.0; screen
       magnifier users 4.5; control group .06.
     * Subjective rating (1-7 scale with 7 indicating the most positive):
       Screen reader users 2.5; screen magnifier users 2.9 on task;
       control group 4.6.
       
   Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup.com) is a user-experience
   think tank that advises companies about how succeed through
   human-centered design of products and services. Nielsen Norman Group
   principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce ``Tog'' Tognazzini are
   each world-renowned experts in usability and human use of technology.
   Besides authoring books and evangelizing about user experience, they
   and the other user-experience specialists in Nielsen Norman Group
   offer high-level strategic consultation on usability of websites,
   consumer products, software designs and anything else that needs to be
   easy-to-use. Press contact: Darcy Provo, Antenna Group
   darcy@antennapr.com; 415/977-1920.
   ______________
   
   Contact:
     Antenna Group (for Nielsen Norman Group)
     Darcy Provo, 415/977-1920

   _______________________

Received on Monday, 22 October 2001 22:29:53 UTC