• Free Web Accessibility Q&A Call – Derek Featherstone and the Simply Accessible team host a session to enter accessibility questions
• Experience Accessibility First-Hand on May 9 – suggestions on activities to raise your own and other people’s awareness of accessibility
• May 9 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day – from the blog of Glenda Sims
• Global Accessibility Awareness Day – from the blog of Joe Dolson

And an extra accessibility nugget for good measure:

• One Step at a Time – how do you bake accessibility into your process? Derek Featherstone has some thoughts.

You’ve got Internet gateways through my world…
–Ace of Base

• Screen Reader User Survey – if you are a user of screen reader technology, head over to WebAIM and take their short survey by May 25th.
• Blogging Against Disablism Day – Bruce Lawson shares statistics about Multiple Sclerosis as well as his personal challenges dealing with its symptoms
• Charles Schwab Announces Website Accessibility Initiative – Financial services company Charles Schwab announces improvements in the accessibility of their web site

You’ve got Internet gateways through my world…
–Ace of Base

• Video Games Are More Than Just a Feast for the Eyes – Fascinating article about a family of blind video gamers and how they play without seeing game visuals
• Suggestions for the new Disability.gov – Great observations as always from our friends at Web Axe.
• Setting a context for a content strategy vocabulary – Nice glossary of terms for developing a content strategy (something I’m doing on a project right now).
• UX Success Starts With a Good Strategy – Good advice for any user experience effort. A clearly-defined and communicated strategy keeps everyone on the same page and working toward a common goal.

You’ve got Internet gateways through my world…
–Ace of Base

Full Circle Arts, a Manchester, England-based organization dedicated to opening channels into the arts for all people regardless of disability, just launched a newly-redesigned web site.

They offer lots of ways for aspiring artists to achieve success, such as: toolkits and resource articles; links to arts organizations; job opportunities; and the ability to create a profile to showcase one’s artistic abilities.

I learned about Full Circle Arts last year, when they reached out to me to write a feature article, to be launched with the new site.

Now that the redesign is in place, my article, The Accessibility of Color on the Web, is now available. Check it (and the rest of their site!) out.

Also, follow Full Circle Arts on Twitter and their Facebook page.

Many others do this too, and I really like the idea. It’s a way for me to build accessibility awareness, and keeps me active in scouring the web for more information.

Here are some things from the past week that particularly caught my eye:

• How Blind People Use the iPhone 4S – interesting insights from Tommy Edison, the Blind Film Critic, on how he utilizes his iPhone.
• Building an Accessibility Body of Knowledge – David Sloan talks about the need for accessibility resources for those new and old to the field alike.
• Content order on touch screens – Henny Swan points out that proper ordering of information isn’t just important for desktop web experiences, but mobile as well.
• What Does Sweetness Sound Like? – fascinating exploration of how sound and taste relate.

You’ve got Internet gateways through my world…
–Ace of Base

Anyway, let’s wrap up our journey through the classic 10 Usability Principles.

All blockquotes are from the Ten Usability Heuristics.

7. Flexibility and efficiency of use

Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

In creating a good experience, you shouldn’t cater only to the newbies. Find ways to provide shortcuts for experienced users, so that they don’t have to go through unnecessary steps every time they try to do something they routinely are coming back to do.

A classic example is providing shortcuts, such as key commands. New users to computers may go to the File menu and click “Copy”, then go back to click “Paste”. Crusty old vets like us use Command (or Control) C and Command (or Control) V.

The Accessibility Slant
Screen readers provide ways for blind users to jump around a web page instead of having to hear every single word, including from ever-present elements like navigation. Properly-coded sites make it easy to hop from heading to heading.

We’ve talked before about adding skip navigation functionality to web sites, to achieve similar shortcuts around tedious repetition. That’s what that “Skip to Content” link at the top of this blog is for. A blind user doesn’t have to hear things the navigation and everything up in the header over and over and over — they can skip it and get to the good stuff.

8. Aesthetic and minimalist design

Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

Keep things simple and straightforward. Much like a good writer eliminates unnecessary words to build a concise, impactful piece of work, you should ask yourself with every element you put on a web site or in an application, “Is this really necessary?”

Boil it down to the most critical information. Anything else is probably just noise.

The Accessibility Slant

First off, once again, people are just trying to get information or complete tasks as easily and quickly as possible. If you go crazy with unnecessary words, links, images, etcetera, someone with a screen reader has to trudge through all of that. All of us do!

Now imagine someone with cognitive limitations, or even just a short attention span. If the experience ambles and rambles, they may lose interest, become frustrated, and just plain leave.

9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

Like I said in the last post, it’s best to come up with ways to minimize errors entirely. But they are going to happen. When they do, make sure the messages that the user sees make sense. “Error 23423432 – System Failed to Execute” is useless. What happened? What did I do wrong? How do I fix it?

Tell the user what’s going on in normal user language, not system garble.

The Accessibility Slant
Some of these are just too easy to draw a direct accessibility connection to. We’ve talked a lot about people with cognitive disabilities. Don’t make it a struggle for a user to figure out why their actions failed. Frustration and failure will send people away, disabilities or not.

10. Help and documentation

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

Good user experiences indeed minimize the need to read tomes or hunt through help systems…or, God forbid, frequently asked questions. But sometimes they just have to be provided. If they are, they need to follow all of these tenets. In particular– easy to get through, easy to find what you’re looking for, concise and direct.

The Accessibility Slant
Whether a sighted person is looking at the words or a sightless one is hearing them, clutter and confusion are nothing but obstacles. A person going the help section of an application or web site is having a problem, possibly is frustrated, and just wants to get back on track. Make that as easy as possible. Short, sweet, and easily searchable is key.

If you’re using video for tutorials, remember that not every user can hear. Provide subtitles and/or transcripts so that they get the answers they need too.

There you have it. We’ve gone through all 10. Hopefully it’s obvious that every one of these makes natural sense to good accessibility. People with and without disabilities have many of the same common needs when navigating through a web site or application. Barriers of any kind slow them down, stop them entirely, and overall create a less-than-enjoyable user experience.

Following these 10 tenets require a little diligence, but they aren’t overly complex. It’s common sense really, which is why they are timeless.

The Usability Principles Series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

We tackled the first three last time. Now, we’ll look at the next three, then wrap it all up with the final four next week (it is, after all, college basketball tournament time, so why can’t we have a final four of our own?).

All blockquotes are from the Ten Usability Heuristics.

4. Consistency and standards

Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

Call things by the same name everywhere on your web site or application. Switching around terminology will throw people off. This includes being consistent with links, buttons…all calls to action. You never know who is getting to your site or application on what page, so make sure it feels like a unified experience everywhere.

The Accessibility Slant
Keeping naming conventions the same once again benefits everyone. Someone trying to get through a site with a screen reader appreciates knowing that what’s called one thing on one page, is called the same thing on another. If they are drilling down into a site and therefore quickly skipping through unnecessary information, things should be as predictable as possible.

We’ve talked a lot lately about those with cognitive disabilities. Changing what you call things, particularly key elements like buttons or calls to action, only leads to confusion and frustration.

5. Error prevention

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

It’s not wrong to have messages telling the user something went awry. But it’s far better to make things so clear that the chance for mistakes are next to nil.

Take for example a form that someone has to fill out on a web page. Identifying up front which fields are required, as well as some basic instructional text before the form, is much better than having them fill out the form, hit Submit, and then finding out what fields are mandatory.

Zappos identifies clearly which fields of their My Account form are required, with asterisks but also by identifying what the asterisk means right up front, before you even get to the form itself.

Another example — imagine you’ve got an application that controls some piece of equipment. If there are settings the user can, if careless, seriously mess up the equipment by altering, maybe put some safeguards in there, like “Are you sure you want to do this?” confirmation prompts.

The Accessibility Slant
Let’s take our form example again. A well-constructed form that clearly identifies the labels for each field, which ones are required, and what format information should be entered (such as stating that the date should be typed XX/XX/XXXX), when encountered with a screen reader, will be presented to the sight-impaired user in a clear, orderly manner.

That same user may avoid the form altogether if the labels are missing or the sequence of the form is confusing. Or, they may get very frustrated when they think they’re filling it out correctly, but then are constantly met with error messages after submitting.

Should we even get started again on CAPTCHA? Nah – just check out my post True Tales of Accessibility Ignorance for the pitfalls that that technological gem often presents.

6. Recognition rather than recall

Make objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

If you have a multi-step process, like a shopping cart, don’t stick all the instructions at the very beginning and make people remember them as they progress through. If Step 5 has important instructions, make sure they are located on Step 5.

Tooltips and an ever-present help section are a couple ways that provide lifelines to users of a website. Don’t make someone hunt down information when it’s just as easy to have it right there, in context.

The Accessibility Slant
This one certainly screams “Be considerate of those with cognitive disabilities!” If someone has troubles remembering or really has to focus and pay attention to what they are doing, it’s unreasonable to expect them to remember key information they read several pages ago.

People may come in to your web site from several different ways, with screen readers or just standard browsers. It doesn’t do them any good if they jump to your “Buy This Product” page but haven’t a clue how to buy your product because all your detailed instructions were off on the home page or the help pages or who knows where.

In Short…

If your language is consistent, your instructions are up front and in context, and you don’t have glaring ways for users to catastrophically screw up, your experience is well on its way to be user friendly. Principles like these sure seem like common sense, and yet so many web sites and applications fail miserably in meeting them.

Four more to go!

The Usability Principles Series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 (coming the week of March 19)

To the uninitiated, this involves combing through the application, screen by screen, and calling out what is working well and what isn’t. There are various methods, but what I did was point these out on screenshots, then list them in a table with severity assigned and suggestions for improvement. Putting on the hat of the user (not literally — that’d be kind of gross), I used as a guideline Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics.

Though they are pushing 20 years old and their wording feels a bit mechanical and unfriendly at times, these principles still hold up as logical guidelines to evaluate whatever it is you’re looking at, be it software or a web site.

Because user experience and accessibility are so intertwined, I thought it’d be interesting to recap the 10 principles, and make an accessibility comment about each of them. We’ll start with the first 3 in this post, then tackle the other 7 down the road.

All blockquotes are from the Ten Usability Heuristics.

1. Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

This one boils down to never leaving to guesswork where the users are, what they are doing, or what’s happening.

Some examples:

• Gustave is buying fancy shoes on the Web. While he’s in the checkout system, the site lets him know what step he is on, from start to finish.
• On her trusty banking site, Jo-Jo just filled out a bunch of tax information. She hits submit, and it’s going to take the site several seconds to process. The site displays a screen that says, “Please be patient while we process your info,” so that she knows she successfully hit Submit and something is going on.
• Ace wants to join the mailing list for his favorite muscle car magazine. He fills out a form on their website with his particulars, then hits Submit. The site fires back with a reassuring, “Thank you — you’re all signed up!” message.

An indicator on Expedia.com that shows the system is searching for flights based on the selections you made.

The Accessibility Slant
Making it clear where the user is benefits everyone, whether disabled or not. Proper use of titles, headings and sub-headings help those using assistive technology devices such as screen readers, which provide easy methods of calling out what those headers are. Clear-cut way finders in extensive processes are particularly useful for those with cognitive disabilities, keeping them focused on what they are seeing.

When you use a wait screen, make sure that page or overlay is accessible too! Expedia’s has text and images with alt tags that a screen reader should have no trouble parlaying. Some wait screens employ Flash or a similar technology, which have methods to ensure accessibility but are often forgotten or overlooked.

2. Match between system and the real world

The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

One of my most trafficked posts is The Inaccessibility of Jargon. Use the language of your users! A site selling winter hats shouldn’t read like an engineer’s technical manual or play corporate world catchphrase bingo with made-up words.

The Accessibility Slant
Keeping your content clean, clear and in the user’s language again benefits everyone. A user with cognitive challenges doesn’t need their experience compromised by content that is hard to understand. And once again, avoid abbreviations and acronyms! You never know how people are coming to a page — those acronyms may be completely out of context even if you define them up front.

3. User control and freedom

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Don’t set your users down paths they can’t easily get out of. If they get themselves stuck in some location or process they didn’t mean to, make it really easy to climb out and back on their way.

Going back to the shoe-shopping above — say that Gustave has a pair of shoes picked out and is up to the step where he is entering his credit card information and address. Then he realizes he picked out the wrong size! A good commerce will let him easily go back to a step where he can modify that size, without having to struggle to figure out how. Maybe it’s a Modify This Order option; maybe it’s links in the Step 5 of Step 5 way finder.

If you commit a typo (or perceived typo) when entering search words, Google will offer an alternative by asking “Did you mean…”.

The Accessibility Slant
Once again, a good experience minimizes users getting lost in a maze. Like the other 2 principles we’ve talked about, this is particularly important for those with cognitive disabilities. Clear links and ways back also make screen reader navigation easier — the technology provides means for disabled users to more easily hop from link to link, or heading to heading.

In Short…
Clear paths and clear content benefit everyone. The drum we keep beating is that accessibility makes things easier for everyone, regardless of whether they are disabled or not. These first three principles certainly reaffirm that. Whether you’re a person with cognitive challenges, a visually-impaired person relying on screen readers, or none of the above — you want and need to be able to see where you are in an interactive experience, where you’ve been and where you need to go.

Next time, we’ll tackle a few more usability principles.

The Usability Principles Series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 (coming the week of March 19)

1. I’ve mentioned mkeUX before, and even had the honor of presenting my Accessibility: An Even Playing Field at one of their gatherings awhile ago. Well, they are back at it after a brief sabbatical. Check out their latest blog posts, and stay tuned for a bevy of new presentations in the Milwaukee area!

2. I’m heading to UX Week in San Francisco, CA this summer. It’ll be August 21 to 24. The details are coming soon, but it looks like it’s going to be a great lineup of speakers. I’ve heard nothing but good things from people I know who’ve attended in the past. It’s safe to say I’ll have a ton of things to share upon my return.

That’s all for now. Here’s to 2012 and getting the dust cleaned off the art of web accessibility!

I hadn’t intended to end my blogging drought with a topic like this, but I just have to leave a tribute to such an important part of my life, and this blog seems the best forum.

On Sunday, February 19th, my wife and I had to say goodbye to Stella, the dog we had for nine years.

To say it was one of the hardest days of my life is an understatement. I don’t think I’ve cried so many times in my life.

But what I don’t want this to be is a glum, downbeat post. I’d much rather focus on the good memories, since Stella was a wonderful dog who provided endless joy to our lives.

Where better to start a tribute than at the beginning…

About nine years ago, in May, only a month after Tamara and I said goodbye to Samantha (Sammy), our Scottish Terrier, we saw a picture on the Wisconsin Humane Society website of a very cute but very scruffy little dog. A Shih Tzu-Poodle mix about 2 years old, “Stephanie” (as the Humane Society had named her) was a recent stray. We decided we would go to the Humane Society after work to check her out.

Being that she was a small dog with a mild temperament, I didn’t have a good feeling she’d even still be available by then. So I went down what would be a pretty stumbling path to get registered to adopt a dog there, get permission from our then-landlords, and then put down some money to put a hold on her, so no one could swoop in to adopt her before we got there.

After work, Tamara and I headed down and checked her out. Had I not put the hold on the dog, I’m pretty certain the elderly woman sitting in the lobby hoping we wouldn’t show up would have gone home with her. She was this timid, mellow dog who sat on a bed in the corner, but then came calmly over to greet us. I was instantly won over, but I think Tamara was still uncertain about if we were ready to have another dog. Seeming to sense this, “Stephanie” came strolling back from her bed, gave Tamara a kiss, then headed back. The deal was sealed.

Less than an hour later, we were driving home with a dog and realized we needed a new name, since Stephanie just didn’t seem right. My wife came up with Stella, and it just seemed perfect.

Stella immediately bonded with two toys that were afterthoughts of Samantha’s. One was a golden chicken, the other a strange big-nosed orange thing. We named them Clucky and Orangey, and Clucky in particular became a favorite of hers. In fact, Clucky would always be her favorite, even as her stash of toys (which we nicknamed her “peeps”) ballooned to probably over 50 at its height.

I couldn’t begin to list out everything I loved about Stella.

Just some of the things that come to mind:

With each passing day, the pain lessens and it’s easier to smile and remember all the joy Stella brought us. She was the sweetest of dogs, who adored Tamara and me equally, and was so laid back and easy to take places.

I knew, deep down, that we didn’t have a ton of time left with her, after we got the prognoses in November, so I made a point of finding as many moments to treasure as possible. Without fail, I made sure every day after work to have that quality lap time. I gave her extra pets and told her several times a day how much I loved her.

The day before she passed away, I spent the entire day playing video games with her snuggled right on my lap. I’m so glad that I did.

I’d give anything to be able to hug her one more time, or even just give her a pet. The other night, I came to bed and immediately became profoundly heartbroken realizing she wasn’t within reach, to give a few random pets throughout the night. Instead, I’ve been sleeping with her favorite blanket.

But it warms my heart that she lived a full life, having gone from possibly-abused stray dog to incredibly loved and spoiled by so many people. And it’s so comforting to know that even though her heart disease was getting worse rapidly, she left this world happy and pain free. We buried her, with Clucky in her arms, next to one of her best friends, Taffy.

So yeah, there are times still that I get really sad about losing her…but in truth, it was such a gift having a best friend who unconditionally loved us and brought us nothing but happiness and fun. It was heartwarming to see dozens of responses on Facebook when we passed along losing Stella. And I sat down last night and made an iPhoto album of nearly 500 pictures of her, some of which you see throughout this post.

I’m rambling now, because I could go on forever about my little sweetheart.

I just owed it to her to leave a tribute somewhere. I’ll never forget you, Schuggs. You were the best dog we could have ever asked for.