Andrew Betts, director of Assanka, explains why we should care about accessibility and usability, and how intelligent design can help to reach the most diverse audience on Earth.
Over time web development agencies have gradually come to realise the problem with trying ultra-innovative design techniques: designers may understand them, but pretty much nobody else does. What ordinary internet users really appreciate is sites that work the way they expect them to, and give them the information they want in a way that makes it easy to find and digest.
Enter accessibility and usability, the watchwords of modern website design, at the heart of which is the understanding that your average user is not a technologically expert 25 year old able-bodied professional computer user. The two concepts are related but distinct - accessibility is concerned with the technical matter of making a site work on the largest variety of platforms, while usability is a much more subjective discipline that is all about ensuring the user understands what they are seeing and can easily assimilate the information with which they are presented.
Accessibility is normally considered to be the more important of the two for disabled users. For instance, a blind user will access the web using a speech browser that reads the pages to them. If the page does not 'sound' right in the speech browser, it's not accessible to that person.
Usability affects everyone, but is much more difficult to define. A usable site will implement usability in many small ways - well chosen colours, consistent layout, simple language - even things you don't realise you're noticing are instinctively drawing your attention to where the web designer wants to lead you. Things like the 3D effect on buttons, use of blank space and overlapping blocks of colour all create 'affordances', subliminal hints that nudge you subconsciously in the right direction. It's amazing how many times I've seen friends and family trying to use a website and failing because the design is working against their preconceived expectations and instincts.
The Outlaws
Surprisingly it's often really big organisations that are the worst offenders when it comes to accessibility and usability. Odeon has been notorious over the last two years for having arguably the worst high-profile website in the country. Not only does it only work in one browser on one type of computer, but it also only uses a tiny part of the screen, and scrolling requires holding your mouse over a miniscule down-arrow while the options slowly roll by. It was so bad for so long that some enterprising chap decided to put together the 'Accessible Odeon' site, which downloads the entire Odeon website on a daily basis, reformats all the information and presents it at a different address. It was an instant hit, and remained popular until Odeon deployed lawyers in July. Fortunately they did eventually produce an alternative, accessible site of their own.
They're lucky they didn't get sued. The Sydney Olympics weren't so fortunate, and had to pay out $20,000 to a blind user who claimed they were preventing him from using the Olympics official site. They then faced a much larger bill to redevelop the site so that disabled users could view it.
The Shining Stars
Thankfully, there are a few shining examples of the way it should be done, usually smaller organisations who do not see such a challenge in 'going accessible'. When Assanka were asked to redevelop fusepr.com, we took accessibility issues seriously from the start, and as a result the site can be used by a hugely diverse audience, regardless of the platform or connection speed, or the technical knowledge or ability of the user.
For users with up to date computers, the site is colourful and engaging, with mouse over menus to speed navigation and a logical layout to make for speedy digestion of the information we're communicating.
For those with disabilities, the site is equally easy to use. The JavaScript menus are not actually required to navigate the site, which means that the site can be navigated entirely using the keyboard, and also doesn't rely on JavaScript being enabled in the user's browser. Another key point is the acknowledgement that people may want to increase the text size. While some sites actually fix their text so that the size cannot be changed, we adopted the opposite strategy, and made the entire site zoom on demand. If you change the text size, everything gets bigger or smaller, not just the text itself.
Finally, the site adheres to the Web Accessibility Initiative's level AA guidelines for accessibility, and the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) XHTML standard for content rendering. These ensure that even when a user can't load the style sheet that defines the look of the site, they can still read the content. Overall, these measures produce sites that are not only very inclusive to the most diverse audience possible, but also act as an excellent example of a company's technical proficiency. What's more, when you come to update the site later, changing the design or adding new features, it's a breeze, because everything conforms to standards that are widely understood.
Another example of good practice is the journey planner service from Transport for London. Printing out a route automatically reformats a page to exclude all the site navigation options, which are useless when printed, and fit the paper without the need for a printable version. They also have a good deal of services for the visually impaired or the gadget-equipped mobile surfer on their PDA or phone.
The Law
The Disability Discrimination Act has been slowly coming into force over the last eight years, and is now fully implemented, but its effect on website operators has been somewhat less than exemplary. A recent survey by the Disability Rights Commission found that 80% of the 1000 websites surveyed did not meet even the most basic accessibility standard laid down by the W3C.
Website operators cannot be held entirely responsible for this. Until a case is presented to the courts, there is no precedent for interpreting the DDA in the UK, and the law remains fairly vague. The closest the Act comes to a direct reference to the web is to talk about 'information services'. It may well require somebody to sue somebody else before we all have a clear idea of where the boundaries really lie.
The Future
The size of the disabled market is frequently overlooked by companies, but at up to 7% of the population, it has a significant purchasing power. And as the population as a whole gets to grips with more and more gadgets like mobile phones, PDAs and new desktop browsers, the benefits of being accessible are rapidly growing. Holding on to this diverse audience is a good 'carrot' for website operators to make their sites accessible, but it may not be enough. If that's the case, the 'stick' of litigation will eventually force the reluctant to come on board.
With a high level of expertise in implementing accessibility and designing for usability, Assanka is the ideal choice for businesses who want to take the internet seriously.