beatnic - just wondering

Make someone’s day!

Tell them they can use the Tab key on their keyboard to move through a web-page.

To those who already know, it seems obvious, taken for granted.

But if you’ve ever watched people filling out boxes on forms on banking websites or when setting up an account on a website using the mouse to move from one input box to the next, you can imagine their relief on learning about the Tab key.

The Tab key “focuses” on links and form elements, such as boxes you need to fill details in, moving from one to the next.

And Shift+Tab does the same thing in reverse.

Of course, this assumes the web-page has been well-designed. You should be able to Tab through the screen in a logical order. This order can be easily specified by the web designer, and is particularly important when it comes to accessibility, so there’s no excuse for not doing it.

We’ve been running some design research sessions which involve several scenarios, each of which uses a slightly different design version for a website.

Each scenario has its own starting page, each of which we put in a different tab in Firefox.

This means setting up all the tabs and start pages for each research session.

To save time, we set these up once.

We then select Bookmarks > Bookmark All Tabs… > {name the folder}. [Keyboard shortcut for this is Ctrl+Shift+D]

These are then all available for each session via Bookmarks > {folder name} > Open All in Tabs.

Handy.

If you’re using tabs in Internet Explorer, the same functionality is available via Favorites > Add Tab Group to Favorites > {name the tab group}

The Tab Groups are then available via the “Favorites Center” [Alt+C on the keyboard].

We’ve all seen it.

The dreaded “Skip Intro”.

The picture of the boss on the homepage obscuring any useful content or functionality.

I was just discussing this with a friend and came up with a new name for an old problem “Bonus-centred design”

Here’s how it works:

• Take direct orders from the boss. Do not ask questions
• Do not clarify purpose
• Remember the boss knows what good design is - it must be interactive have things you can click to make other things move around
• Do not under any circumstances talk to potential users of the site
• You only need one person to test with. The boss
• Do tell the boss how many hits the site will get. Forget about task completion
• Do your best to get a video of the boss on the homepage welcoming people to this amazing online experience
• Reinforce the design with company branding at every opportunity. The more suited to busines cards and company stationery the better
• Make it all about the company and not about the people who use your products and services
• Do not worry about accessibility. It takes time and costs money. And anyway the software supplier assures their product will have an accessibility patch very soon

I’m sure there are more…

Today Martin Belam publishes the scores from his excellent series of articles looking at the accessibility of the UK’s main national newspaper websites.

The Times came out on top, even though it makes no use of an on-screen text-resizing widget, nor of accesskeys as shortcuts for keyboard users.

Overall my conclusion has to be that only a couple of newspapers are taking seriously any obligation to make their services accessible. I was particularly concerned by The Sun and the Daily Mail using CAPTCHA technology with no alternative for users with accessibility issues, but the general pattern for most papers was quite poor. Many are putting completely unneccessary barriers in the way of people reaching their content by making simple decisions like using fixed font sizes, and not including ’skip navigation’ links.
[source: currybetdotnet]

The results are worrying but not surprising. And as Martin says, he’s still really only “scratching the surface” in his tests.

Sadly all too few website managers understand their obligations as far as accessibility and the law is concerned. Webcredible have a useful summary here, but in a nutshell you can be sued if you do not make reasonable adjustments to provide equal access to your content to everyone.

The RNIB has approached two large companies with regard to their websites. When they raised the accessibility issues of the websites under the DDA, both companies made the necessary changes, rather than facing the prospect of legal action (in exchange for anonymity).
[source: webcredible]

People really shouldn’t need convincing. I wonder if it would make any difference if they realised that by improving the accessibility of their websites, they will also make them more usable and more “readable”. And when it comes to the big internet search engines, being readable means being findable.