Re: Accessibility humanized

Recently the UK Disability Discrimination Commission evaluated the 
accessibility of 1000 UK websites.

http://www.drc-gb.org/publicationsandreports/report.asp

They used a number of methods including bobby checks, expert reviews 
and real user tests. Interestingly they state that.

"As many as 45% of the problems experienced by the user group were not 
a violation of any Checkpoint, and would not have been detected without 
user testing."

and concluded that

"It is clear that compliance with the technical guidelines and the use 
of automated tests are only  the first steps towards accessibility: 
there can be no substitute for involving disabled people themselves in 
design and testing, and for ensuring that disabled users have the best 
advice and information available about how to use assistive technology, 
  as well as the access features provided by Web browsers and computer 
operating systems."

I'm personally interested in how the WAI guidelines were derived. Are 
they a result of comprehensive user testing, or simply recommendations 
from accessibility experts?

Received on Monday, 23 August 2004 08:51:13 UTC