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Is an Accessible website Usable?

Introduction

With nearly 14 million households in the UK having access to the internet, it is widely becoming an essential communication tool.¹ The web plays an important part of every day life enabling us to perform an array of activities from finding out information for a school project to making an expensive large purchase or managing our accounts through the facility of online banking. In a recent survey it was estimated that 84% of users searched for information about goods and services.² As a result, many more companies are developing state of the art websites to represent their business.

To enable disabled users in having equal access to these goods, facilities and services, an amendment was made to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. This act states that individuals should not encounter unjustifiable discrimination by goods, facilities and service providers on account of disability. This legal requirement coupled with the fact there are almost 10 million disabled people in the UK with a combined spending power in the region of £80 billion per annum goes to reason why many web developers are keen to ensure their website meets the accessibility guidelines set out by the World Wide Web Consortium. ³

It is often assumed that accessibility and usability are two separate disciplines. Accessibility focuses on the technical and legal aspects in making the website available to the widest possible audience with usability focusing on making the website easy to use for all users, not specifically those with disabilities. It is recognised that making a website accessible will go some way to making it usable but it may not necessarily mean that the website will be ‘easy to use’.

At AbilityNet we believe in the concept of ‘usable accessibility’ whereby accessibility and usability go hand in hand and are not treated as two separate disciplines.

This article will briefly discuss web accessibility and web usability before explaining the benefits of usable accessibility in making a website both accessible and usable.

What is Web Accessibility?

With the growing number of services offered online, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) took positive steps in trying to reduce the barriers faced by users with disabilities such as those with vision, hearing, mobility and cognitive impairments. In 1997 they created the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) which saw the creation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG) in 1999. These guidelines form a measurable set of checkpoints which web developers can follow to ensure their web content is accessible to a wide variety of users. The W3C defines web accessibility as “… people with disabilities can use the web … people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web and they can contribute to the web.”⁴

Many people nowadays feel they are fairly competent in looking for information on the internet. Whether it’s to check the latest news headlines or book a holiday, they are starting to feel comfortable with the concept and purpose. When a website is designed correctly, users tend not to think farther than looking, pointing the mouse and clicking. The trouble is however, there are a significant proportion of users who cannot just look, point or click.

In the UK an estimated 2 million people have a vision impairment, 1.5 million have cognitive difficulties and 3.4 million have a disability which prevents them using the standard keyboard, screen and mouse set-up. These figures do not account for the 6 million users with dyslexia, the many millions who experience literacy difficulties and those where English is not their first language.

Additionally, there is a growing number of elderly ‘silver surfers’ who are generally less confident about using computers and would significantly benefit from having a more accessible and usable interface, not to mention the fact that they may have deteriorating eyesight, hearing or manual dexterity problems.

Despite legislation being in place for over a decade, some recent studies carried out by AbilityNet found that between 80% and 96% of websites do not even meet a minimum accessibility threshold. It would appear that there has been no discernable movement towards accessibility since the Disability Rights Commission investigation in 2004 which put this figure at 81%.⁵

Whilst the guidelines specifically talk in the context of disabled users, those without disabilities also benefit from accessible websites in that they generally find them quicker and easier to use by a staggering 35%.⁶ When users visit a website they are seeking to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. Whilst some aspects may make a website seem funkier such as flash movies and animated gifs, it is often the case these additions make the website in general more difficult to use. Accessible websites are simply easier and more intuitive to use and improve productivity for everyone.

AbilityNet have also found that commercial websites that have been re-launched in a more accessible form have seen savings in maintenance costs of up to 70%, rises in natural search engine traffic of around 30% and an additional 13,000 visitors each month from improved browser compatibility alone.⁷

What is Web Usability?

Web usability means designing a user interface that is effective, efficient, and satisfying. There is a precise and widely accepted definition now provided by ISO 9241: “the extent to which a product [or website] can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use”.⁸

Issues presented tend to have an impact on all users equally and are not due to a specific disability. Unlike web accessibility, there is no legal requirement in making a website usable. However, if a website is difficult to use, users will become frustrated and leave in search of another. Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert defines usability by 5 quality components:⁹

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks without becoming frustrated or wanting to leave the website?
Efficiency: Can users perform tasks such as completing the process of buying a product on an ecommerce website efficiently and in a reasonable amount of time?
Memorability: Will users remember how to use the website the next time they visit?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the website? Will users return to the website?

What are the benefits of Usable Accessibility?

Whilst it is necessary to have a measurable set of checkpoints to ensure websites are accessible, the mere presence of accessibility guidelines has the danger in leading web developers to pay lip service to them. A strict focus on accessibility as a scorecard does not in itself create an accessible and usable website. We need to go above and beyond the technical aspects provided by WCAG and take into account the ‘human factors’ of browsing a website. We need to be aware of how users with disabilities access and use websites such as those accessing with screen readers, voice recognition and magnification software.

The benefits of usable accessibility are demonstrated more clearly in situations where accessibility checkpoints have technically passed but are unusable. It is not until the website is tested by real users that these usability issues are exposed. At AbilityNet we cannot emphasize enough the fact that engaging disabled users in testing the website with real tasks in addition to following the accessibility guidelines is the only guaranteed way of ensuring everyone can use the website easily and effectively.

To illustrate the benefit of usable accessibility, we can look at the following examples:

Checkpoint 1.1 states: ‘Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element’. To pass the checkpoint a web designer needs to provide a text equivalent for all non-text elements such as images. However, it is not stated within the checkpoint how this should be achieved nor does it provide guidelines as to what constitutes an accessible equivalent. For instance, a blind user listening to the information would not be able to assess the importance of an image if the text equivalent provided was “this is an image”. Whilst this would technically pass the checkpoint because a text equivalent has been provided, it is not meaningful and therefore, not usable.

Similarly, a website may contain a combo box with a list of 20 options. This to a sighted user accessing with a mouse may seem straightforward, but for someone who is blind and listening to the information this will be very time consuming.

Finally, providing a ‘skip navigation’ link is often assumed to be solely for the purposes of screen reader users, and for aesthetics web developers hide this link. However, it is not until you access the website as a keyboard only user that you realise the importance the visibility of this link makes.

Conclusion

An accessible website does not necessarily mean that it is usable. For this reason, accessibility and usability should not be treated as two separate disciplines and should be combined to ensure the website can be accessed by the widest possible audience.

The Disability Rights Commission report into web accessibility¹⁰ and PAS 78 have highlighted the importance of testing websites with disabled users to ensure that they are fully accessible and can meet the demands of real users. It is highly likely that if the website is accessible and usable to a group of users with a range of impairments accessing via a range of access technologies, it is likely to work for all users.

AbilityNet is able to offer information, advice and a range of services to help make a website accessible and usable for everyone – including accessibility audits, disabled end user testing, training, support, accessible web design and a range of useful resources.

For further details please email accessibility@abilitynet.org.uk.

Footnotes

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For more information:

Email accessibility@AbilityNet.org.uk
Phone 0800 269545

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