Usability and Accessibility & Myths and Misconceptions about Accessibility

Question 1

Usability

Answer 1

Usability determines how easy a design’s user interface is to use and how functional a product or design is. Key components of usability assess:

• How easy it is for users to learn the basic tasks of the interface;
• If users can perform those tasks quickly;
• If users can recall performing those tasks after time away from the interface;
• The number of errors, the severity of errors, and recovery from errors in the interface; and
• If the design satisfies users.

The effectiveness of the user interface, or fitness for purpose, and how much time goes into using the interface according to the user are evaluated during usability testing.

Question 2

Commonalities - Usability and Accessibility

Answer 2

The components used for evaluating usability can also be applied to accessibility. Accessibility focuses on how usable and satisfying a product or service is to people with disabilities, including but not limited to people who use assistive technologies. In terms of usability, accessibility increases the chances of more people being able to use a product or design regardless of their abilities.

More overlap occurs between usability and accessibility when accessibility practices increase usability for everyone and usability increases accessibility. Using high contrasting colors for web pages not only helps people who have low vision or colorblindness, but it also helps those using their devices in bright sunlight. Ensuring that a web page is keyboard accessible assists those who are blind, those who may have a motor impairment, or users without disabilities who prefer to use keyboard strokes for browsing and navigating. Usability practices that promote using simple language and intuitive designs may assist those with cognitive disabilities to use a product or service more productively.

Question 3

Differences - Usability and Accessibility

Answer 3

Usability issues tend to affect every user, both users with disabilities and users without disabilities. All users face some difficulty using a product or service. Accessibility issues occur when people with disabilities encounter difficulties using or accessing a product or service.

There are also times when remediating accessibility issues may cause usability issues. For instance, if all images on a website are assigned very long text alternatives, the images may be accessible, but listening to long alternative text creates usability issues. There is a fine balance in ensuring that addressing accessibility issues does not cause usability issues and addressing usability issues does not create accessibility issues.

To help determine the differences between usability and accessibility in usability test reports, reports should highlight accessibility issues, detail which users with disabilities the issues affect, and state the specific accessibility standards the issues fail.

Question 4

Myths and Misconceptions about Accessibility

Answer 4

Talking about web accessibility makes some people nervous, and they come with a list of objections, many of which are actually myths. Being able to refute such short-sighted misconceptions is essential for the progress in the accessibility revolution and to support day-to-day work on accessible web sites.

Question 5

Myth: Accessibility benefits only a small minority

Answer 5

Truth: Accessibility Benefits a Wide Variety of People

It’s true that when you design with accessibility in mind, you have to think specifically about people with disabilities, but the benefits of accessibility extend far beyond just people with disabilities. The same principles that make a web site good for people with disabilities also make it good for people on mobile devices, and for people who access web sites on different brands of browsers, or on different brands of computers, or on older browsers or computers. Accessible web sites are easier for search engines to index and catalog, making the sites easier for everyone to find, not just people with disabilities. Accessible web sites are also better for people who are aging who may be losing their eyesight or their hearing or their mobility or their cognition.

Question 6

Anyone can acquire a disability

Answer 6

Another aspect of disability to consider is that any one of us could acquire a disability at any moment in time. If you don’t have a disability now, chances are that you’ll acquire one eventually, assuming that you live to an old age. People tend to lose physical abilities as they age, in all categories: vision, hearing, mobility, cognition, and so on.

Question 7

Disabilities are a sizeable minority

Answer 7

Also, don’t be too quick to dismiss a group of people just because they’re a minority. People with disabilities make up about 20% of the population at any given time. Not all of those disabilities affect a person’s ability to use the internet (reliable statistics for that are hard to find), but a portion of that 20% will face some sort of challenge when using a computer. Besides, accessibility isn’t something that’s optional or just kind of nice for people with disabilities. Accessibility is necessary and non-negotiable. Without accessibility, people with disabilities can’t use web sites, and that can have a dramatically negative impact in their lives.

Question 8

Myth: Accessibility is a short-term project

Answer 8

Truth: Accessibility is an ongoing design requirement

Accessibility is not going away. As long as there are people, there will be a need for accessible design. There will always be people with disabilities, because it turns out that is a normal part of the human experience. Future medical advances and social advances (e.g. fewer wars, less poverty, etc.) will likely decrease the number of people with disabilities, but we will never reach a point of zero disabilities, because there are always situations in which a person might have an injury, a temporary disability, or a temporary circumstance that prevents certain types of actions or sensory experiences.

You can compare accessibility to other focus areas like security or privacy. Those needs will never disappear or be phased out. They are ongoing requirements in all stages of development and QA.

Question 9

Accessibility must be embedded into the process

Answer 9

Accessibility needs to be part of the process from start to finish, including:
* Business requirements
* Design requirements
* QA requirements and test cases
* Training of new employees
* Ongoing training and professional development for current employees
* Software to detect accessibility flaws

Question 10

The company culture must commit to accessibility

Answer 10

Having a vision and top-level buy-in, where explicit support from the CEO and other leaders within the company is expressed, is very helpful in setting accessibility expectations within a company. Without visionary leadership, a company’s efforts will be haphazard at best. In the absence of this kind of leadership, there may be a few people or departments within the company that may commit to accessibility, but an incomplete approach will always produce incomplete results. The organization is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

Question 11

Commit resources and full-time jobs to accessibility

Answer 11

A successful accessibility program is led by people whose full-time job is to coordinate accessibility efforts. Hire people who specialize in accessibility, and give them enough authority within the company to make a real difference. Let them do what is necessary to hold the company accountable for producing accessible results.

Ensure there are people with strong technical knowledge of accessibility within the company. Sometimes it makes sense to split the roles of accessibility program management on the one hand and accessibility technical expertise on the other hand. That way, people with strong management skills can focusing on managing, and people with strong technical skills can focus on providing the subject matter expertise.

Question 12

Hiring people with disabilities can be immensely helpful

Answer 12

Working together on a daily basis with people with diverse abilities and disabilities is one of the most powerful ways to ensure that accessibility is at the forefront of the design process. Having colleagues with disabilities makes it real. It’s much easier to understand accessibility when you see the effect directly on people you know and interact with.

Hiring people with disabilities requires a concerted effort in the HR process. Keep in mind that people with disabilities face numerous obstacles throughout their lives, so it is easy to focus on perceived weaknesses in their qualifications. Those weaknesses may be real, but may not be their fault. Systematic discrimination plays a key role in suppressing the potential of people with disabilities. Be willing to commit to inclusive hiring practices as a long-term strategy.

Question 13

Myth: Accessibility should be the last step

Answer 13

Truth: Designing for Accessibility is Much Easier (and results in a better design) than Retrofitting for Accessibility

A last-minute bolted-on approach usually results in a bad design, and a bad user experience. It might be possible to create a last-minute solution that is technically functional (sort of)—or maybe even technically compliant with the guidelines—but to make it actually a good user experience, you probably have to start over.

Adding accessibility at the end can be difficult. Imagine trying to add electrical wiring and plumbing to a building after the building is finished, and all of the interior design is in place. Where would you even begin? You’re going to have to tear apart the walls and force things to fit where they weren’t designed to fit. You might be able to do it, but you wouldn’t enjoy it, and it would take a lot of time and effort to come up with something that is barely acceptable. You might be better off starting over.

Accessibility might never get done at all. If an organization discovers that the accessibility work is too hard (because they failed to plan properly at the beginning), they may decide to skip the effort altogether and release a web site that is badly flawed. Business goals often trump accessibility goals in those situations, and people with disabilities end up on the losing end.

The cycle is self-perpetuating. Until accessibility is taken into account in the concept and design stage, it is impossible to produce high quality accessible designs, because of the practical constraints of trying to retrofit a finished design when it’s too late.

A last-minute approach exposes systematic neglect. Even if it is not intentional, failing to take into account the needs of people with disabilities shows that their needs are not a priority for an organization.

Poor planning is a legal liability. If an organization is constantly producing web designs that fail accessibility standards, the organization is constantly at legal risk for discriminating against people with disabilities, in violation of applicable laws.

Design with accessibility in mind from the beginning. It takes a little bit of extra forethought and planning, but it saves you a lot of work down the road.

Question 14

Myth: Accessibility is hard and expensive

Answer 14

Truth: The Cost of Accessibility is Reasonable when Compared to the Cost of the Alternatives

Question 15

Maintaining an accessible system is cost effective

Answer 15

Creating an accessible system does cost money, but failing to create an accessible system can turn out to be even more expensive in the end.

In contrast to the previous myth, some people think that accessibility is too much of a burden, so they avoid the responsibility and choose to take their chances with legal liability. There is some truth to this objection if you’re trying to retrofit an existing web site with lots of accessibility problems. At that point it’s too late to reap the benefits of good planning. You may have to start over, and starting over is certainly expensive.

If you start with accessibility in mind, though, you’ll be able to incorporate accessible design into every step of the process, and soon it will become second nature. There will always be some cost associated with accessibility. It takes time to plan for it. It takes time to add accessibility features to the markup. It takes time to add accessibility features during the development phase of scripts and widgets. All of this time costs money. But when compared to the cost of trying to retrofit for accessibility, or compared to the cost of trying to defend a lawsuit against your inaccessible web site, the costs are not as bad as they may seem at first.

Question 16

Lawsuits are expensive

Answer 16

Avoiding accessibility for fear of the cost can lead to another kind of cost: the cost of legal litigation. If your company is served a lawsuit, the cost of fighting can be extraordinarily high, especially if the lawsuit goes to court, and most especially if the court rules against you. The court may demand the payment of fines, damages, and/or legal costs. Even if the legal action does not go to court, just the act of engaging the lawyers of both sides can be expensive.

Question 17

Negative publicity is expensive

Answer 17

Having your company’s name in the news for failing to meet the needs of people with disabilities is the kind of publicity that is best to avoid. It can be even worse if your company decides to fight against making things accessible. Being known as a company that intentionally discriminates against people with disabilities isn’t exactly the best way to build good will among clients, and among people with disabilities in particular. Negative publicity can spread quickly and can undermine other positive things that the company may be doing.

Question 18

Myth: Accessibility is ugly

Answer 18

Truth: Accessible web sites can be stunningly beautiful… or not

Let’s first debunk the fear of ugliness. It’s a myth, or at least it should be a myth. Certainly, there are some ugly designs out there for people with disabilities. But that’s more of a failure of the imagination than a necessary condition. If you want to create ugly designs, you’re free to do so, but don’t use accessibility as an excuse. Designs for people with disabilities can be just as beautiful (or as ugly) as designs for anyone else. That part is up to you.

Question 19

Most Accessibility Features Are Invisible

Answer 19

The whole point of universal design is to make one design that fits the needs of a wide range of people. One of the nice things about the web is that this is usually pretty easy to do because most of the accessibility fixes are invisible. You can create a single design that looks beautiful, and which also happens to be accessible.

Alt text for images:
Invisible. Available only to screen readers and other assistive technologies.
Labels for form elements:
Invisible (at least the <label> tag itself is invisible).
Headings:
The heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) are invisible. The text itself is visible, as you would want it to be.
Table Headers:
The code to designate a header cell in a table (<th>) is invisible. Marking a cell as a header causes the text to be bold and centered, so in that sense it alters the visual appearance, but if you don’t like it, you can use CSS to change it back to non-bold and left-aligned (or any other style that you like).
Lists:
Lists alter the formatting by grouping the items by bullets or numbers, but if you don’t want those visual effects, you can change them with CSS. It is common to create a main navigation menu for a web site using an unordered (bulleted) list, and then style it to make it look like tabs or buttons instead of like a bulleted list.
Language:
Invisible. The default language of the document is set in the underlying markup (<html lang=”en”). Changes in the language are also in the markup (<span>Hola. Me llamo Pablo</span>).
Keyboard Accessibility:
Ensuring that all actionable items on a web page are accessible to a keyboard doesn’t require a change in the look of the web page. It just requires a change in the way the markup and scripted interactions are structured.
Reading Order:
Invisible. The underlying reading order depends mostly on the order that things appear in the source code, not the order that they appear in the visual rendition of the content. You can rearrange the visual aspects of the design as much as you want with CSS positioning without altering the reading order in the markup.
Captions:
If you use closed captions, the captions won’t appear in the video for people who don’t turn them on.
Audio Descriptions:
If you use closed audio descriptions, people won’t hear them unless they turn them on.
ARIA:
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Application) markup makes interactive JavaScript widgets more accessible to assistive technologies without changing the visual appearance. All of the markup happens in the code.</label>

Question 20

Color Contrast

Answer 20

Some web designs use colors that are too similar to each other, or that don’t provide enough contrast between the text and the background, so in some cases designers need to increase the contrast by changing the colors.

Question 21

Links to Skip Navigation

Answer 21

It is good practice to put a link at the very top of the web page that allows users to skip past the navigation and go directly to the main content of the web page. One of the main audiences for a link like this is blind screen reader users. If they were the only audience, then the link could be invisible, but they are not the only audience. Sighted keyboard users must also be able to access the link. Designers tend not to like putting an extra link in their design if they know its purpose is to serve people with disabilities, and not the majority of their site visitors. One way that designers have gotten around this design inconvenience is by making the link invisible until users tab to it, and then making it disappear once users tab away from it. That approach allows sighted users to use it, without cluttering the visual design with an extra link.

Question 22

Cognitive Disabilities

and design

Answer 22

This is one area where the design might need to look radically different. If you’re designing with the needs of people with cognitive disabilities in mind, you probably need to simplify the content down to the barest minimum. Depending on the type of cognitive disability you’re targeting, you may need to simplify the text substantially, or you may need to eliminate the text altogether and replace it with images, videos, audio, and interactive components. This course, for example, is not designed to be ideally accessible to people with cognitive disabilities. The assumption is that you are a competent web designer, developer, project manager, or some other professional who is interested in learning about web accessibility. Not all of the content here is appropriate for people with cognitive disabilities, and it would be difficult to make it accessible to people who may never understand enough about web design to make the effort worthwhile. That’s an honest assessment of the accessibility of this course to people with serious cognitive disabilities. That being said, it is possible to implement some suggestions without “ruining” the design, such as illustrating concepts with images, not using slang or idiomatic expressions, and expanding acronyms and abbreviations the first time they appear in the text.