Web Usability Blog

Trenton Moss has posted an article Accessibility audit vs. accessibility testing on the e-consultancy site. This is a very interesting article and I agree with much of what Trenton has said. I would however, like to take issue with one or two points he makes. Trenton says "The Disability Rights Commission have consistently said that testing a website with real disabled users is the only [my italics] way to ensure it offers optimum accessibility - the PAS 78 document very strongly state that accessibility testing is the way to uncover all [my italics] accessibility issues..."

There was an interesting piece on the BBC's In Touch programme this week talking about Local Authority web sites getting worse, not better, for blind people to use. Julie Howell, who is on a British Standards Institute working party developing standards for accessible site development, commented:

I had an interesting telephone conversation with one of our clients recently about benchmarking their web site. They are a major government organisation and are redeveloping their website. They wanted to benchmark the site before and after the redevelopment. The main driver for the benchmarking seems to be to justify the expenditure on the redevelopment.

We have recently being doing some work with a number of university sites. We have been usability testing their sites and doing attitudinal research with users to understand better their goals and circumstances.

We were recently approached by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to help them redevelop their website. Previously the website had been aimed at researchers seeking funding for their work. Conscious of the need to engage with a broader public base, BBSRC were keen to ensure the content was 100% user focussed and accessible to an audience beyond academia. At the same time, they wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the profiles and goals of their existing website users.The BBSRC website is crammed full of information on some of the most exciting areas of contemporary science. It also provides information on research grants for everything from sustainable agriculture to theoretical biology. Given the breadth and depth of this resource, the engagement of Web Usability presented an excellent opportunity for BBSRC to reappraise how their website could be made more readily accessible to the general public, students, the media and opinion leaders. BBSRC also planned to introduce additional content, and wanted to ensure that it was built around this broader user base. We carried out some initial usability testing at our Wiltshire studios with a group of appropriate users. This revealed a number of issues that limited the success of the user experience. They concerned the layout of the website, but we also identified some navigation issues that made task completion difficult.

When I stepped off the tarmac in Athens after an easyJet flight from London, my baggage allowance contained neither bathers nor beach reading. I was here at the invitation of Stelios himself. The entrepreneur founder of the easyGroup of companies had asked us to gather user evidence about his newest web based holiday business. easyCruise offers cruises to Stelios's ancestral home, Greece; and consequently is perhaps also the company closest to his heart.

It's interesting to see that 'Target', a large US retail operator, has just agreed to pay $6 million and make its Web site more accessible to the visually impaired by next year, to settle a class-action dispute with the National Federation of the Blind.

WUP usability tested the digitised version of one of the most important books in the world - the Codex Sinaiticus - prior to its recent launch.