Subject: UWired Usability Committee February meeting notes


UWired Usability Committee

2/26/01

Present: Dan Comden, Stacy Waters, Carol Robinson, Rick Ells
Topic:   Accessibility and Usability - A discussion led by Dan Comden

Dan demonstrated the IBM Home Page Reader, an audio browser,
which can be downloaded for a free 30-day trial
 o On the web at http://www-3.ibm.com/able/hpr.html
 o Includes more intelligent abilities to read HTML,
   included table navigation with a number of options
 o Cost $149 for first copy, $79 for each additional

Accessible design is a subset of usable design
 o Considering accessibility in Web design really makes
   a difference for disabled using the site
 o Want to avoid the situation where the introduction of a
   new technology means certain employees cannot do their jobs

What disabilities are we dealing with?
 o By far the largest number of people with disabilities are
   those with learning disabilities
    - dyslexia
    - Attention Deficit Disorder
    - dyscalculia - problems doing math
 o Web design has biggest impact on people who are blind or
   have visual impairments
    - light sensitivity prompts some to reverse colors
      (white text on black background)
    - minor color blindness, need to avoid certain color
      combinations

Testing your site
 o Hard to find user test subjects to legitimately test a site
    - So many different kinds of disabilities, which should
      you test for? Best practices for one group may not be
      good for another.
    - Disabled people may interact with sites in significantly
      different ways. Blind people, for example, often have
      phenomenal memory skills
 o Can you use each page without touching the mouse?
    - If it does not need mouse, should work for speech
      input and for alternative keyboards such as pointers
      and sip-and-puff control
 o Can you tab through the page to efficently
   navigate the content?
    - Many portals have too much junk content, requiring
      endless tabbing on each page
    - Google has become the search engine of choice among
      handicapped because of its clean, sparse design
 o Try navigating your page with a voice browser such as
   IBM's Home Page Reader
    - Put a paper bag over the computer screen so you
      don't cheat (you can also put the bag over your head)

Designing your site
 o Keep in mind that HTML language is designed to structure
   information (identifying text blocks by logical type)
   rather than for presentation - use HTML properly to
   create good structure and it will work better with
   accessibility programs
 o Use style sheets to control presentation
    - Allows people to use their own style sheets if they
      need different visual characteristics
      (You can tell your IE browser to use a local stylesheet
      by going to Tools->Internet_Options->General,
      then click on the Accessibility button at the bottom
      of the menu, in the Accessibility window that comes
      up in the "User style sheet" box click the checkbox
      for "Format documents using my style sheet" and enter
      the path and filename for your stylesheet.)
    - Simplifies HTML by moving presentation stuff (color,
      size) out of HTML into the style sheet
 o Keep in mind that 95% of usable, useful content on Web pages
   is text - make sure the text is well done and well organized
 o Avoid using neat features and new technologies just
   because they are there - carefully evaluate their impact
   on usability and accessibility
 o Pop-up windows can be disorienting
    - The pop-up window grabs focus from the main window,
      it can take a while to figure out what happened
 o Fly-out windows (like on the UW Home Page) can be a real problem
   if they are the only way to navigate

New technologies
 o Good audio browsers are available
    - IBM Home Page Reader
        http://www-3.ibm.com/able/hpr.html
    - JAWS
        http://www.hj.com/JAWS/JAWS.html
    - Windows Bridge
        http://www.synthavoice.com/
 o New products give access to the whole computer
    - JAWS works best with the widest variety of Windows
      software, including MS Office
    - You want a full access system with hooks into the
      operating system
    - Older products that did text->speech conversion were
      intended for text with simple structure. New products
      are much smarter about dealing with layout, structure,
      and other types of media files.

What's Happening in Accessibility
 o A lively discussion list is Yahoo's webwatch-l, maintained
   by Kelly Ford
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/webwatch-l


 |- Rick Ells - 543-2875 - rells@cac.washington.edu - Rm 011S MGH Bldg -|
 |-                http://staff.washington.edu/rells/                  -|