Web Usability Blog

We are bringing this this one up from the archives as it is still as relevant as ever...

2020 has been an amazing year for accessibility, with great progress made by many organisations towards a more inclusive online environment.

But there is still a way to go, and we need everyone on board for this journey!

What is involved in an accessibility audit?

Conducting an accessibility audit is usually viewed as a techy activity and is best done by a coding pro. While a knowledge of HTML is important, this is only part of the skill set required.

A number of years ago, I was returning a hire car to Geneva airport and had to fill it with fuel before leaving it. At the petrol station I got out and tried to open the filler flap but could not see how to do this. Assuming there was a release button inside the car I got back in and started hunting around. I looked in all the usual places but without success.

Back in the day, before April 2011, before the Government Digital Service was launched, public sector websites were pretty much awful.

Like many industries, the UK's museums and galleries are cautiously starting to reopen following the coronavirus pandemic. For all, however, it will be far from business as usual.  

We have recently seen has been a flurry of requests for accessibility audits. In the UK this seems to be driven by new regulations for public sector websites and in the US due to a rise in accessibility litigation. So what are the legal requirements to make your website accessible?

We consider three elements to be key in any user experience research we undertake:

We recently worked on a number of projects where we have been developing personas. This can be a powerful tool in bringing focus and clarity about what content to develop and how to present this, especially for larger information sites run by teams with lots of stakeholders.

However, some recent experiences suggest organisations don’t know how best to use these.

Developing effective websites often requires organisational change to a culture where people at all levels in the organisation adopt behaviours that make a 'good user experience' an important goal. A good user experience is one where a user achieves their goals and is highly satisfied with the process; it will encourage reuse and recommendation of the site. If the organisation is not focused on providing a good user experience, they will be unable to build an effective web site. Understanding the user experience, through research methods like usability testing, can be a powerful tool in driving the organisational change needed to develop effective websites.

• What are Personas
• What do personas 'look like'
• How do Personas help
• How Personas can be used
• How not to use the Personas
• In Conclusion...
• References

User-centred design puts the user at the heart of the design process so that the resulting product is easy to use. 'Personas' are a way of bringing the user alive - constantly reminding the development team who they are designing for. Personas, for developing web sites, have been around for a while and over the years we have seen both good and bad practice in the ways they are developed and used - so just how helpful are they?

How people interact with your organisation is likely to change radically over the next few years. The maturing of some key technologies, most notably machine learning and conversational interfaces, means your users may no longer be using your website.