Accessibility for the Uninitiated

1
Accessibility for the Uninitiated

• Presented by
• September 2008

2
Who we are

• Leading user experience consultancy
• Offices in Edinburgh London
• Our services
• Usability testing
• Eye tracking
• Testing with disabled users
• Expert evaluations
• Accessibility reviews
• Focus groups
• Usability and accessibility training
• Clients DTI, Economist.com, Houses of
  Parliament, Emirates Airline, RBS, ACAS many
  more
• My background
• System Testing
• Web development
• Accessibility Consultant

3
Who are the uninitiated?

• For the past year we have been working with a
  major UK company.
• Providing training on usability and accessibility
• Intranet site administrators
• Generally no awareness of usability or
  accessibility
• Intranet page designs varied wildly
• No standard adopted
• Limited accessibility functionality in the CMS
  used.

4
Background

• Major UK Utility Supplier
• 2,500 Site administrators
• Little or no usability or accessibility training
• Very few with experience in website construction
• Limited interest in site administration
• Not their main role
• Want to add/edit information then return to main
  job.
• All users of existing intranet
• All find the intranet a frustrating experience
  from a usability perspective.

5
Main challenges

• Content Management weaknesses
• Little interest in usability and even less in
  accessibility
• After lunch session. The Graveyard Shift.
• No clear understanding of what accessibility is.
• Unable to grasp how disabled people use web
• Blind people probably the easiest to imagine.
• Had no experience of disabled people using
  assistive technology in their departments.
• HR would not provide us with details of how many
  disabled users employed.
• Little understanding of (or legal responsibility
  for) compliance.
• Technical limitations e.g. cannot install
  assistive software on locked down computers.

6
Content Management System

• Content management system has limitations-
• Produces invalid markup
• Inline ltFONTgt tags and fixed sizes
• Incorrectly nested headings (start at lth3gt)
• Use of table based layouts
• Use of JavaScript based concertina menus
• Damage limitation exercise
• Identify which available structural elements not
  being used correctly
• Link naming eliminate click here
• Nested tables
• Correctly nesting what headings are available

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Content Management Systems (in general)

• Notorious for producing inaccessible markup.
• As a result, can be impossible to implement
  accessible page content.
• Training site administrators is ineffective if we
  do not train the developers who build and
  maintain the CMS.
• In-house CMS tools often less accessible than off
  the shelf-
• Large number of developers
• Inconsistency in design, functionality

8
Disabilities

• It is critical that users understand not only the
  disabilities affected but also-
• The differences in users needs
• The different way that users navigate
• Keyboard only
• Alternative input devices
• Less obvious effects of particular disabilities
• Memory issues
• Navigation restraints
• Inaccessible accessibility

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Raising interest

• Images of assistive technology
• Demonstrations of assistive technology
• JAWS screen reader in 40 minute mode
• Screen magnification
• Page customisations
• Browser controls
• Video footage of disabled users using the web.
• More straightforward-
• Get participants to try and browse their pages
  without a mouse.
• Anecdotes from disabled testing.

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Raising interest (2)

• Hands on analysis of their own pages
• Pointing out accessibility issues
• Explaining how these issues affect disabled users
• Mini-audit
• Use tools such as Colour Contrast Analyser to
  show how site would look to colour blind users.
• Provide video clips without sound and afterwards
  ask participants to provide details of what took
  place in the video.
• Difficult without dialogue or transcript.

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Impact

• Demonstration of a disabled user accessing the
  intranet generally has most impact
• Most participants will not have witnessed
  disabled user accessing the web.
• Many companies wont disclose details of disabled
  staff.
• JAWS in 40 minute mode
• Use screen reader to access pages.
• Responses are generally quite dramatic.

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Summary

• Awareness of accessibility issues was low amongst
  content contributors.
• Required to tailor the course to cover only what
  the could do using the CMS.
• Acceptance that intranet sites wont become fully
  accessible overnight.
• Interactive demonstrations of assistive software
  very popular although not always technically
  practical.

13
Thank You

• User Vision
• 55 North Castle Street
• Edinburgh
• EH2 3QA
• Tel [phone]
• Email markpalmer_at_uservision.co.uk
• Web www.uservision.co.uk