good read about web accessibility and usability

Can anyone suggest where I can find a good read about Web
Accessibility and Web usability.
What is the difference between the two?

Thanks
Karthik

Karthik <karthik.strider (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Can anyone suggest where I can find a good read about Web
Accessibility and Web usability.
What is the difference between the two?

Accessibility is a question of not excluding anyone, making sure that
everybody - not just some people - can access the site or service. An
analogy would be making sure that your building is accessible to
wheelchair users and blind people.

Usability is a question of making sure the site or service is pleasant
and easy to use in general, and does what it is supposed to do. An
analogy would be setting out your building so that people can find their
way around easily, making the rooms suitable for the activities people
want to do in them.

Daniele
--
A multipart copy & paste encyclopaedia of popular music for you to keep

36. There are hardly any good songs about astronomy.

Can anyone suggest where I can find a good read about Web
Accessibility and Web usability.
What is the difference between the two?

Accessibility is a question of not excluding anyone, making sure that
everybody - not just some people - can access the site or service. An
analogy would be making sure that your building is accessible to
wheelchair users and blind people.

That's ok

Usability is a question of making sure the site or service is pleasant
and easy to use in general, and does what it is supposed to do. An
analogy would be setting out your building so that people can find their
way around easily, making the rooms suitable for the activities people
want to do in them.

Tha's not ok, that's not usability.
Usability is NOT a matter of making a web site easy to use in general, but
it must be referred to a well specified target, to a well specified kind of
users the Web site is dedicated to.
Usability for all users simply does not exist.


Roberto Castaldo
----------------------------------------
Responsabile della Formazione IWA Italia
Coordinatore www.Webaccessibile.Org
W3C WAI WCAG ed E&O WGs Member
Email: formazione (AT) iwa-italy (DOT) org
Email: r.castaldo (AT) iol (DOT) it
Messenger: rcastaldo (AT) hotmail (DOT) com
----------------------------------------

Roberto Castaldo - IWA/HWG <r.castaldo (AT) iol (DOT) it> wrote:

Usability is a question of making sure the site or service is pleasant
and easy to use in general, and does what it is supposed to do. An
analogy would be setting out your building so that people can find their
way around easily, making the rooms suitable for the activities people
want to do in them.

Tha's not ok, that's not usability.
Usability is NOT a matter of making a web site easy to use in general, but
it must be referred to a well specified target, to a well specified kind of
users the Web site is dedicated to.
Usability for all users simply does not exist.

That is why I said: "does what it is supposed to do", but perhaps I
wasn't clear enough about that - usability involves usability for a
specified purpose. A banking service on the web will have some quite
different usability criteria from an online forum.

You are quite right that universal usability for every purpose and user
is impossible in a single site or service, but that doesn't mean that
making things pleasant and easy to use *in general* is not part of
usability. There will be some characteristics shared by banking services
and online forums which make for good usability.

Daniele
--
A multipart copy & paste encyclopaedia of popular music for you to keep

36. There are hardly any good songs about astronomy.

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Karthik"
<karthik.strider (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writing in news:1170456302.353246.287950
@h3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

Can anyone suggest where I can find a good read about Web
Accessibility and Web usability.
What is the difference between the two?

Thanks
Karthik

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/

--
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Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

On 2 Feb 2007 14:45:02 -0800, "Karthik" <karthik.strider (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
wrote:

Can anyone suggest where I can find a good read about Web
Accessibility and Web usability.

http://diveintoaccessibility.org/

Lemming
--
Curiosity *may* have killed Schrodinger's cat.