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Accessibility and Usability

What is usability and accessibility?

Usability is a term for assessing how easy a user interface is to use. The following five things define usability.

For more about usability see:

Something is "accessible" when it can be used by anyone including people with disabilities. In the same way buildings have ramps for people using wheelchairs, information systems and web sites need to be accessible to employees or customers who are blind, deaf, or physically disabled. When an information system is accessible, its screens can be magnified and color-enhanced, its text can be read aloud with computer synthesized speech, its audio tracks can be translated to text as closed captions, and it can be operated using special keyboards or voice commands.

Why is accessibility important?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires governments and businesses to ensure that information on their Web sites is accessible to employees and customers with disabilities. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act requires that almost all Federal information technology be accessible as of June 2001. This applies to Web applications, Web pages and all attached files. It applies to intranet as well as public-facing Web pages.

Resources

Below is a list of resources outlining form and table guidelines based on current and on-going research into accessibility, usability and web standards

Forms

Forms

Web users with vision impairment and/or physical disabilities or with learning disabilities can find it very difficult to use web forms. Here are a few things that will make your web forms more accessible.

For assistive technologies to people with disabilities the devices need to be able to associate form labels with the correct form controls, such as a text field or checkbox. It is important to label all form controls correctly.

Web users without impaired sight or mobility can use a mouse to move around the screen by randomly pointing and clicking, but many people interact with the Web (and forms) using the keyboard rather than a mouse. To make it possible for them to use a web form there must be a logical sequence created by the form designer. Some people with mobility impairment require modified keyboards or alternative input devices such as a mouth stick or head wand. People with restricted mobility can be helped by reducing the number of movements they have to make when filling in a form.

For people with learning or cognitive disabilities the logical presentation of items in form, where associated information and requests are grouped together, can be essential. A well-organised form is easier to understand and use effectively.

The key areas for creating accessible forms are: Logical layout, Keyboard access, Grouping form controls, Labels, Graphical buttons and Text areas.

Logical layout

Personal information

Medical History ...medical history information...

When designing forms use

Resources

Below is a list of resources outlining form and table guidelines based on current and on-going research into accessibility, usability and web standards

Text tags

The types of non-text elements requiring actual text descriptions are those elements that provide information required for understanding the content or those used to for navigation. A text equivalent for every non-text element will be provided by using the alt tag or longdesc tag.

A text equivalent means adding words to represent the purpose of a non-text element. When an image indicates a navigational action such as "move to the next screen" or "go back to the top of the page," the image must be accompanied by actual text that states the purpose of the image. When an image indicates an action, the action must be described in the text.

Example

Back to the previous screen  Move to the next screen

Do not use text descriptions for graphics that convey no information, or are redundant. For instance, web page designers often use transparent graphics for spacing. Adding a text description to these type of design elements only creates unnecessary clutter for screen reader users. For these kind of graphics use an empty ALT attribute (alt="").

Non-text elements

Provide a text equivalent ( "alt", "longdesc", or in element content) for every non-text element. This includes: images, graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map regions, applets and programmatic objects, frames, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, buttons, check boxes, pictures and embedded or streaming audio or video.

Multimedia and audio presentations

Multimedia presentations should include audio for people who are sight impaired. Audio is a non-textual element, the audio portion must be captioned for people who are hearing impaired. A text transcript should also be available.

Color

Web pages must be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color.

When colors are used as the only method for identifying screen elements or controls, people who are color blind as well as those who are blind or have low vision, may find the web page unusable. This doesn't mean that all pages must be created in black and white. Rather, it requires that there be some other method of identification, such as text labels or different text to describe an element.

For example, a web page should never direct a user to "click on the red button" but should identify the button in another way other than color.

A simple way of testing a web page to see if color is a factor is to print the page out on a black and white printer. You'll be able to see if removing color affects the usability of the page.

Tables

Data tables

 

Tables for layout

 

Labels

 
Narrative: