Accessibility is the measure of how many differently skilled/abled types of people (including individuals with disabilities) in varying locations (e.g. mobile web) can make use of a given product. There exist many, very thorough, guidelines for determining the degree to which a product adheres to accepted accessibility standards. However, many can be very complex and time-consuming, also requiring the study of a good deal of the underlying code — much of which goes against the goals of the ‘quick’ part of Quick-UX.
Quick-UX
Quick-UX provides for the rapid, simple and quantifiable assessment of a product’s User Experience (UX). In answering the question of Usability, "Should I use it?" the sub-category of Accessibility represents one of the more complex components.
Today, we will look at the remaining 2 of the 3 examples of products with Moderate Accessibility: a Quick-UX Accessibility value between 0.4 (inclusive) and 0.6.
Moderate Accessibility
For this set of products, I chose ones that either encouraged or required reading as the primary function of the product. A category that begs for a clear attention to the Accessibility needs of their varied user bases.
Example: Bloomberg
Bloomberg’s web product is geared towards the presenting of top headlines and news within a variety of categories.
The Bloomberg product is the highest scoring product within the set of products of Moderate Accessibility…
… receiving an Accessibility variable value of 0.596.
Should Do
Text Equivalents
- As is common to many products, here too, it is equally important to provide ALT text in association with the image it is describing.
- Replace all “Decorative Images” containing empty ALT attributes (e.g. ALT=””) with CSS-based solutions. Images that exist to contribute content to the page should contain a descriptive, non-empty, ALT attribute.
Example: NY1
Like Bloomberg, the NY1 product exists to present and make news convenient for its visitors.
NY1 revealed the following results from FAE…
And, with Accessibility variable value of 0.58, also earned its place within the level of Moderate Accessibility.
Should Do
Styling
- As is common to many products, here too, it is equally important to provide ALT text in association with the image it is describing.
- NY1 would be well served to use neither the <b> nor <i> elements. They are an indication of font-type and provide no contextual meaning. In these cases, the use of stylized header tags (<H#>) or <strong> or <em> would be better suited.
- Separating the presentation from the functional layers is also important, not just to the development process, but also to Accessibility. The use of <font>, <center>, and other inline styling, like…
… should be moved to the product’s CSS.
Quick & Usable
Over the next few weeks I will continue exploring the ins-and-outs of a variety of products, and walking through real-world examples of the Quick-UX evaluation of Accessibility…
Comprehensive Accessibility [RoundHouse & FAE]
Nearly Comprehensive Accessibility [UseIt & Eboy]
Moderate Accessibility [Borders, Bloomberg & NY1]
Fair Accessibility [CNET & Drudge Report & NBC NY]
Poor Accessibility [GoodReads & Barnes and Noble]
Subscribe now (click here) to make sure you don’t miss any part of this series exploring the Usefulness and Credibility components of Quick-UX, the quick and easy method of generating quantifiable and comparable metrics representing the understanding of the overall User Experience of a product, as well as other insightful posts from The Product Guy.
Enjoy!
Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy
