2005: Accessibility: which site production standards and testing methods will give maximum return on investment

What standards do you need to meet for your
site to be accessible?

Which methods will give maximum ROI?
Dr Jonathan Hassell Giles Colborne
Accessibility Editor, Digital Curriculum Director,cxpartners
BBC New Media President,UK UPA

Presentation to
BSI Accessibility conference
12/11/2011 11/12/2011 7/7/05 v0.19
jonathan.hassell@bbc.co.uk

What we‟ll be talking about
• Accessibility and “reasonableness”
• Common approach (stereotyped) vs. our suggested approach (UCD)
• Standards:
– Is there an accepted Industry Standard?
– Other standards/guidelines and codes of practice
– Rolling your own
• Testing:
– Test it and put a badge on it
– automated vs. manual testing
– self-check v audit
– acceditation
– accessible v usable
• User-Centred Design
– ISO Standards for measuring usability & UCD process
– Testing methods – cost vs. benefits
• Case studies
– Case study – testing wireframes
– Case study – tables (guidelines vs. results of testing)

12/11/2011 jonathan.hassell@bbc.co.uk
07/07/05 jonathan@hassellinclusion.com 22
© BBC 2005

Accessibility and “reasonableness”
• DDA:
– 1999: aim to prevent discrimination against disabled people for 'goods
and services„
– code of practice (2002) clarification to specifically include
websites, within the provision of 'goods and services'
– DDA requires “reasonable” steps to ensure websites are accessible to a
disabled audience
• So what is “reasonable”?
– depends on the size of your site, budget for site, size of organisation…
– need to be clear who the site is for, and how you are going to support
different groups of users to use the site…
– some accessibility features are more expensive than others…
– ROI: make sure the money you spend actually makes a difference
• But for legal guidance…
see talk on Accessibility & The Law

© BBC 2005

Common approach (stereotyped)…
• you get your technical people to read some
guidelines
• they decide what they can do and do it
• they test it with an automated accessibility
checker
• they put a badge on the site to let people know
they checked it (so it must be accessible)
• you breathe a sigh of relief that you‟re not going
to be sued (you hope)

© BBC 2005

Purpose of accessibility
• Always keep in mind…
• the purpose of
accessibility is to
make things easier for
all of your (client‟s)
audience – start and
end with them in
mind…
• the internet can be a great
enabler for disabled people if
you use it right

© BBC 2005

Our suggested approach (UCD)…
• you work out who is going to use the site
• you get (reps of) your users in to capture their requirements
• you form a policy based on which of those requirements your site
can reasonably support
• you produce the site against standards/guidelines
• but you also get those users to test the site
– preferably iteratively, as you go
• so when it goes live, you‟re sure it‟s accessible to those users you
have decided you can support
– and, as a side-effect, you breathe a sigh of relief that you‟re not going to
be sued

© BBC 2005

Background: accessibility is a partnership
to make a website
accessible, you need all of
the following to work
together:
Website creators
Assistive technology creators
(e.g. Freedom
Scientific, ReadPlease)
Operating system creators
(e.g. Microsoft, Apple)
Disability assessment
agencies
(e.g. AbilityNet, RNIB)
Browser creators
(e.g. Microsoft, Opera)
comms via W3C-WAI…

© BBC 2005

Standards:
Is there an accepted industry standard?
• legal answer = no
• but in practice…
– see W3C‟s WAI guidelines:
• WCAG – technical guidelines for site
developers
– v1… v2
• ATAG – guidelines for creation of site maintenance
tools (incl. CMSs)
• UAAG – guidelines for browser, OS, assistive
technology manufacturers

© BBC 2005

Standards:
other standards, guidelines, codes of practice
• International…(W3C)
• vs National…
– PAS 78: Guide to good practice in designing accessible websites

• vs Organisational (roll your own)…
– e.g. BBC‟s @ http://bbc.co.uk/guidelines/newmedia/accessibility
– Cabinet Office‟s Guidelines for UK government websites
– IBM‟s @ http://www-306.ibm.com/able/guidelines/
– can be useful but be careful when doing this…

© BBC 2005

How to change the culture of your production
teams / clients – awareness, motivation
• Start with your staff… then go to your clients…

• Make it personal: • Make it real:
– get an external
agency to do a survey – send all your staff on an
of your site‟s Accessibility Awareness
accessibility, including course
video-taping of real
users using the site – provide background &
– See the Accessibility motivation for staff & clients
Study of bbc.co.uk for (DDA etc.)
inspiration (available – provide experience of
from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ assistive technologies
commissioning/bbci/w – show the videos of real users
ebsites.shtml) having problems using the site

10
© BBC 2005

How to channel buy-in into producing a
better site – standards & guidelines
• create/identify accessibility standards & guidelines for your sites
– good start: WAI or the BBC Accessibility Standards (from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/newmedia/websites.shtml)
– make sure your standards support your / your clients‟ audiences and production
processes – get your staff to create them
– be pragmatic - for each standard consider…
• is it “reasonable”?
• benefit: does it actually help disabled audiences?
– does it hinder other audiences?
• cost: what aspects of production does it affect?
• communicate them well to staff
• provide a group/someone who can answer specific accessibility questions
as they crop up in practice
• whenever possible, encode the standards in your production tools, so that
staff cannot get things wrong

11
© BBC 2005

Testing: check it and put a badge on it
• DIY - check your conformance
yourself and award yourself a
badge…

• Use an automated site
validation tool and use the
badge it awards you…

12
© BBC 2005

Testing:
Automated vs. manual testing…
• automated tools can be useful
• BUT…
• listen to real people, rather than
automated tools/checklists
“These tools are like spell-checkers; you wouldn’t send out
a spell-checked document that wasn’t manually proof-
read as well”

13
© BBC 2005

Testing: Self-check vs. audit
• are you really experienced enough to do
it?
• would you be able to tell the difference
between:
– a problem which is a limitation of a
screenreader, or
– a problem which is your site‟s problem…
• get in an expert…

14
© BBC 2005

Testing: what accreditation could you
get from the experts?
• currently no UK government recognised
accreditation (quality mark) scheme for website
accessibility
• What you can apply for now:
– See it Right mark (between WCAG A and AA)
• Forthcoming:
– EuroAccessibility Consortium
(http://www.euroaccessibility.org/)
– supportEAM (http://support-eam.org/)

15
© BBC 2005

Testing: user-testing
- accessible vs. usable
• test with disabled users
– many options:
recruit & adminster yourself => ask a lab to do it for you
• a site can be “accessible” but impossible to use
– which is no use to anyone (incl. your non-disabled users)
• use user/accessibility testing to pick up your usability
problems too
– include disabled users in your wider user-testing panel rather
than just do accessibility testing
• and make sure you plan in time to act on the results…

16
© BBC 2005

Even better… UCD

17
© BBC 2005

ISO 9421-12: Measuring usability

Satisfaction Effectiveness

Efficiency

Identify key tasks

Identify key disabled audiences

How well can your disabled users complete tasks on your web site?


Effectiveness
Satisfaction

Efficiency

How often can disabled users complete each task?
- Task completion rate

How well can they complete each task?
- Degree of completion
- Error rates


Satisfaction Effectiveness

Efficiency

How much effort does it take to complete each task?
- Number of keystrokes / clicks
- Time taken
- Pauses


Satisfaction
Effectiveness

Efficiency

Is user satisfied with the experience
- What is an appropriate experience?
- Different for education, banking, buying CDs, entertainment
- Does the experience fit with your brand values?
- Perceived efficiency
- Perceived effectiveness


Effectiveness

Satisfaction

Efficiency

Different systems need a different balance of these elements
Web sites are often self-service
Effectiveness and satisfaction dominate measures of web site usability


Effectiveness
Satisfaction

Efficiency

But for disabled users, efficiency becomes a massive problem

Improving accessibility can be about improving efficiency for disabled
users

45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Effectiveness Efficiency Satisfaction

Measures are only meaningful when you compare them

So measure at least twice

For instance
- Proposed site versus competitors
- Proposed site versus current site

Usability testing methods

Quality of data

User testing

Remote testing

User reviews / interviews

Expert walkthrough
Heuristics
Testing with assistive technologies

Automated testing
Cost

ISO 13407: The user centred design process

Plan user
Produce
centred
prototype Success!
design
s
activities

Test
Specify solutions
goals with
users

Specify
context
of use

Can you really test wireframes?

Exterior

Menu for exterior features -
link to other zones

Drag the mouse to spin the car.
Labels zoom forward and back
Feature 1 Click on label to explore
Feature 2
feature
Click on action nav to order
brochure
Performance
Image of car

Interior
360 spin

Feature 3
AcmeCar jingle

Test drive | Brochure | Downloads Acme
None

Can you really test wireframes

Main nav

Sub nav (features)

Call to action

Feature 1
Feature 2
Main nav
Interior
Exterior
Performance
Performance
Content Main content
Sub nav
Interior
Feature 1 Logo
Feature 2
Feature 3

Feature 3

Test drive | Brochure | Downloads AcmeCar

Logo
Call to action

Case study: user-testing vs. slave to
guidelines…
• e.g. tables…
– WAI level 1 requires HTML
labelling of all table cells
– but…
• user-testing reveals this
doesn‟t produce “better tables”
for screenreader browsing
• this requires knowledge of
special table-browsing mode in
JAWS
– tables are actually more usable
for screenreader users if they
are “linear”
• which is WAI level 2
– example: BBC weather site
• before… and after

29
© BBC 2005

Other useful additions to your site
provide accessibility
information/help:
– include information on:
• browser/OS settings
• assistive technologies
– or link to…
• BBC & AbilityNet‟s forthcoming My
Web My Way
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/)

ask for accessibility
feedback:
– to further inform your
understanding of how people
really use your website

30
© BBC 2005

Thanks for listening
Any questions…

Contacts:
jonathan@hassellinclusion.com
giles.colborne@cxpartners.co.uk

31
© BBC 2005

2005: Accessibility: which site production standards and testing methods will give maximum return on investment

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2005: Accessibility: which site production standards and testing methods will give maximum return on investment