Usability Consultancy, Website Reviews, Website Optimisation

If you read a lot of my articles, you will often see mention of 'usability testing'. Many people think that simply means that your website gets tested for things like

• Testing your website in multiple browsers

• Checking at different screen sizes and resolutions

• Checking all the spellings and punctuation

• Checking all internal and external links

However, there is much more to it than that, including the overall user experience, site structure, content relevancy etc., but here I am going to introduce another, very important, issue that we test when developing or optimising your website...

Accessibility

Accessibility refers to the ways in which people with disabilities access the Internet (including your website) using aids and what, for example, can be read on screen by to aid the blind and what can be comfortably seen on screen by partially sighted people. You would be amazed at how these incredible people surf the Internet with ease – but we can all make it easier for them to enjoy our websites by carrying out extensive accessibility tests.

However, accessibility testing is not restricted to blind and partially sighted people, refers to all main types of disabilities that can impair accessibility or usability of the Internet, including

• Visual Impairments
  Including total blindness, low vision and colour-blindness

• Hearing
  Deafness

• Motor
  Inability to use a mouse/keyboard, slow response time, limited fine motor control

• Cognitive
  Learning disabilities, distractibility, inability to remember or focus on large amounts of information

Accessibility Guidelines

Each type of disability requires different adaptations in the design of websites but most of the adaptations would, in fact, help everybody, not just those with disabilities. For example, almost everyone finds helpful illustrations helpful and finds using a website with well organised content and clear navigation much easier to use. Another example would be to always include captions with video, which helps Deaf users but is also useful to any other user who may be viewing your website without audio capabilities.

In the US, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides recommendations for evaluating websites. In the documents, the W3C make distinctions between preliminary reviews which assess general types of accessibility barriers, an evaluation conformance that determines if a site follows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and a 'conformance evaluation and review of procedures for ongoing monitoring' – the latter evaluation is there to ensure that any website that has been made accessible, continues to be accessible in the future.

As with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in the UK, that looks at issues like physical accessibility into public buildings etc., it would be no surprise to have web accessibility added to a future revision of the DDA in not too many years as the Internet is so important for communication and information to everyone.

Main Principles of Accessible Website Design

There are many things that can be implemented on a website, and Koss UK analyses all of them as part of a full service website management, here is a short list of key principles that should be done for every website and which would have no adverse effect on the visual appearance of a website:

• Ensure links make sense based on the context of the page

• Alternate (Alt) Text on images, illustrations, photos

• Headings for data tables

• Easy to navigate forms

• Captions for media

• Enable skipping of repetitive content (Jump to Article, for example)

• Use colours that have contrast

• Do not rely on colour scheme to express meaning of sections

• Use easy to read fonts and text sizes

• And more...

There is a lot of detailed information emerging on this subject via the Internet and it will become more of an issue over the coming years as groups lobby for more wider implementation of guidelines and, perhaps, laws, to ensure accessibility for everyone.

Koss UK already advocates development of websites that are accessible by screen readers etc., and will continue to research all methods of enhancing the Internet experience for all users – for our own websites and for all our client websites.

Look out for more articles on accessibility in the not too distant future. In the meantime, you may wanto to have a look at some of these Accessibility Links.