Kids' Corner: Website Usability for Children

Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Children

Best Practices: Writing for Accessibility

Most of the time, the primary focus of information about accessibility has to do with making non-text information available as text. Captioning and audio description for video, transcriptions for audio, simple text alternatives for static images. But what about the content itself?

Dolson, Joe. Accessible Web Design (2008). Articles>Accessibility>Web Design>Writing

Web Design for Dyslexic Users

How should a website homepage be created so that people with dyslexia can get the most out of the page?

Marshall, Abigail. Dyslexia Association International (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility

Adobe Acrobat and PDF

After HTML, PDF (Portable Document Format) files are probably the most common files on the Web. PDF is usually used when a file needs to appear or print a certain way, regardless of the browser or technology. PDF files can be made accessible to people with disabilities, although usually with more difficulty than with HTML. A key part of this process involves creating tags that make a document more accessible to screen reader users.

NCDAE (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Adobe Acrobat

On Scalable Text

In order to provide scalable text, make textual information text (rather than images), and use relative text sizes (rather than absolute). Scalable text is important for people with low vision. The basics of providing scalable text are very simple. However, strict design requests can pose challenges.

Henry, Shawn Lawton. UI Access (2002). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Typography

How to Make Your Blog Accessible to Blind Readers

So you have a blog, and you're worried that it might not be accessible to people with disabilities? Don't worry! A few simple changes can increase your blog's potential readership.

American Foundation for the Blind (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Blogging

Color Universal Design (CUD): How to Make Figures and Presentations That are Friendly to Colorblind People

There are always colorblind people among the audience and readers. There should be more than ten colorblinds in a room with 250 people (50% male and 50% female). There is a good chance that the paper you submit may go to colorblind reviewers. Supposing that your paper will be reviewed by three white males (which is not unlikely considering the current population in science), the probability that at least one of them is colorblind is whopping 22%!

Okabe, Masataka and Kei Ito. University of Tokyo (2002). Articles>Accessibility>Graphic Design>Color

Designing Web Content for People with Learning Disabilities

We need to design sites to include as many people as possible so that we have a fairer world. We need accessibility to bridge differences and integrate more people into society. If someone who could understand Web content is unable to because of the design choices of the Web author, then that Web content is not as accessible as it could be - even if it can be used by all types of physically disabled users.

Seeman, Lisa. UBaccess (2002). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility

Designing Pages Accessible to Limited Textual Comprehension Users

Little has been written or done to advance the cause of web users with cognitive disabilities -- users who may actually require the use of graphics in order to make sense of a web site. For purposes of this document, we will use the term "Limited Textual Comprehension" to refer to anyone, disabled or not, who is unable to understand a web page -- and thus cannot access the information contained within in it -- due to the textual content of the page.

Bartlett, Kynn. AWARE Center (1999). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility

How to Avoid Screen Reader 'Noise Pollution'

Surely there can't be a skill to writing ALT text for images? You just pop a description in there and you're good to go, right? Well, kind of. Sure, it's not rocket science, but there are a few guidelines you need to follow.

Moss, Trenton. Digital Media Europe (2005). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Visual

Demonstration of the LONGDESC Attribute and the 'd' Link

When images are provided to illustrate complex ideas, the same information MUST also be provided in an accessible form.

WATS.ca (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Charts and Graphs

CSS in Action: Invisible Content Just for Screen Reader Users

Most of the techniques for making web content accessible to screen readers are invisible to visual users. Alternative (alt) text, table header tags, table summaries, and form tags are examples of techniques that make a big difference for screen reader users, but which have little or no impact on the visual appearance of the web content. Every once in a while, though, web designers confront situations in which the addition of accessible markup does have an impact on the visual layout. In some cases, this visual impact can decrease the usability of the content for visual users. In other cases, designers simply want to provide a more pleasing layout or appearance that would be compromised by including all of the text in a semantically correct format.

WebAIM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>CSS

A More Accessible Map

Most online mapping applications do not address issues of web accessibility. For a visually impaired web user, these highly visual maps are essentially useless. Is there a way to display text-based data on a map, keeping it accessible, useful and visually attractive? Yes: using an accessible CSS-based map in which the underlying map data is separated from the visual layout.

Duffey, Seth. List Apart, A (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Geography

A Dyslexic Perspective on e-Content Accessibility

This paper gives the web developer an insight into the issues of web accessibility for users with dyslexia (and/or other specific learning difficulties). It covers the four main areas of accessibility: presentation, content, structure and navigation.

Rainger, Peter. TechDis (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility

Accessible Folksonomies

I’ve been thinking about one particular artifact of the folksonomy phenomenon — the folksonomy menu that serves as a sort of buzz index providing users with a quick visualization of the most popular tags (technically I think it’s called a weighted list). Popular tags are displayed in a larger font and it’s relatively easy to identify hot topics at a glance. This visual representation of the popularity of any given tag is undeniably cool. However, once the coolness factor wears off it becomes fairly obvious that these menus are also not very accessible.

alt tags (2005). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Metadata

Accessibility in User-Centered Design

A brief introduction, with linked resources, for those unfamiliar with accessibility and/or user-centred design.

Henry, Shawn Lawton. UIaccess (2004). Articles>User Centered Design>Accessibility

Accessibility Humanized

Most web developers act in blindness when they design accessible websites, since they know next to nothing about disabled people and the technology they use. Accessibility guidelines and validation tools doesn't provide this insight. Accessibility should rather be approached from a user centred perspective.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2004). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility

Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design

The Web is providing unprecedented access to information and interaction for people with disabilities. It provides opportunities to participate in society in ways otherwise not available. With accessible websites, people with disabilities can do ordinary things: children can learn, teenagers can flirt, adults can make a living, seniors can read about their grandchildren, and so on. With the Web, people with disabilities can do more things themselves, without having to rely on others.

Henry, Shawn Lawton. UIaccess (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility

Be a White Hat SEO for Your Intranet: It's Good for Accessibility

The SEOs with white hats conduct legitimate optimising of web pages to make the site come up appropriately in the Search Engine Results Pages (also called SERPs). The back hat SEOs implement tricks to appear high in the results pages even if the web site is not necessarily relevant. The range of tricks is astonishing. But most of the techniques used by white hat SEOs were similar if not identical to the guidelines given by accessibility experts.

NetStrategy-JMC (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Search Engine Optimization

Analysis Phase

It is most effective and efficient to incorporate accessibility from the very beginning of a project. When accessibility is only addressed late in product design, it can be very costly to make required design changes. Incorporating accessibility early in the project increases the potential positive design impact, and decreases the time and money required to design accessible products. This chapter provides information on setting usability goals, user analysis, workflow analysis and understanding accessibility issues.

UIaccess (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Usability

Build Accessible Online Forms

Ask anyone who has had to fix a Website that's littered with accessibility howlers, and top-most in their list of problems encountered will be forms, closely followed by tables. These two topics always seem to present the most difficulties, but they needn't be a problem. For the most part, forms are a problem because the extra accessibility tags are simply not known to the Web designer -- after all, it looks right, it seems to work... what's the problem? Only by switching off the monitor and using a screen-reader can our oblivious Web developer understand the issues.

Lloyd, Ian. SitePoint (2003). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Forms

The Guild of Accessible Web Designers

The Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) is a worldwide association of professional organisations, web designers and developers working together to promote the use and preservation of accessible design standards.

GAWDS. Organizations>Web Design>Accessibility

Web Accessibility Network for Australian Universities

We are an informal group of university people who share a common interest in web accessibility. Our members are from universities all over Australia.

WANAU. Organizations>Web Design>Accessibility>Australia

Moving Towards Accessible Development

Below is a bit of an accessibility round up of a few useful tools, articles, sites, and informative podcasts about the topic that may help inform/convince you about the importance of accessibility.

Walter, Aarron. AarronWalter.com (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility

Serving Citizens’ Needs: Minimising Online Hurdles to Accessing Government Information  

With the rapid spread of the Internet across society, government institutions are taking advantage of digital technology to distribute materials to citizens. Is merely having a website enough, or are there certain usability considerations site creators must keep in mind to assure efficient public access to online materials? This project looked at typical people's ability to locate various types of content online, in particular, their ability to find tax forms on the web. Findings suggest that people look for content in a myriad of ways, and there is considerable variance in how long people take to complete this online task. Users are often confused by the ways in which content is presented to them. In this paper, two common sources of confusion in users' online experiences with locating tax forms online are distinguished: (1) URL confusion and (2) page design layout. Ways are also suggested to decrease these two sources of frustration, yielding less exasperating and more productive user experiences.

Hargittai, Eszter. Human Factors International (2003). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Government