Re: accessibility and usability

"Barbara de Zoete" <b_de_zoete (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

[F'up set to ciwas-d]

I am getting more and more confused as to the meaning of the words
'accessibility' and 'usability' *in the context of the world wide web*.
What do these two words mean? How do they differ from one another? Where
does the meaning overlap, if it does? Where do they perhaps conflict with
one another, if they do?

Can anyone please explain to someone who is not native speaking, nor
fluent in English?

In its strictest form, accessibility is often defined as "whether a disabled
person can gain access to the resource".
Some have deemed accessibility as a sub-set of usability. I disagree, in
that an accessible site can still be UN-usable and vice versa.
In other words, one does not necessarily follow from another.

Usability is "how easy it is to use something", whether it is a website or a
mop. Many things you use in your daily life have had their design influenced
by someone in the field of usability. I often use the controls on a car
stereo as an example. At one time, tape decks had a "flip" button which
would reverse the play so that you could play both sides of the tape. The
stereo also had buttons labeled [<<] and [>>] which would "Fast Forward" or
"Rewind" the tape. Problem is, this did a different thing depending on which
side of the tape you were playing. This caused users headaches - a button
should only have ONE action. Some smart usability person decided that the
"fast forward" button should always fast forward no matter what side of the
tape you're on.

Hope this helped.


--
-Karl Core
Please Support "Project Boneyard":
http://www.insurgence.net/info.aspx?...&item=boneyard

.oO(Karl Core)

In its strictest form, accessibility is often defined as "whether a disabled
person can gain access to the resource".

Why restrict it to the disabled? Many websites are inaccessible even for
non-disabled users (lack of plugins or client-side scripting for
example).

Micha

While the city slept, Karl Core (karl (AT) NOSPAMkarlcore (DOT) com) feverishly
typed...

In its strictest form, accessibility is often defined as "whether a
disabled person can gain access to the resource".
Some have deemed accessibility as a sub-set of usability. I disagree,
in that an accessible site can still be UN-usable and vice versa.
In other words, one does not necessarily follow from another.

I disagree. A page needs to be usable if it is going to be accessible. From
section 2.2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidlines (1.0);

"Content developers should make content understandable and navigable. This
includes not only making the language clear and simple, but also providing
understandable mechanisms for navigating within and between pages. Providing
navigation tools and orientation information in pages will maximize
accessibility and usability." [
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#context-and-orientation ]

[...]

I often
use the controls on a car stereo as an example. At one time, tape
decks had a "flip" button which would reverse the play so that you
could play both sides of the tape.

Eeh... I remember when you had to pop the tape out and turn it over! ;-)

Cheers,
Nige

--
Nigel Moss
http://www.nigenet.org.uk
Mail address not valid. nigel (AT) DOG (DOT) nigenet.org.uk, take the DOG. out!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is very, very busy!

In message <3140arF35b50sU1 (AT) individual (DOT) net>
"nice.guy.nige" <nigel_moss (AT) deadspam (DOT) com> wrote:

From section 2.2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidlines (1.0);

"Content developers should make content understandable and navigable. This
includes not only making the language clear and simple."

High aims indeed.
But 'making content understandable' is irrelevant to many sites, and
impossible for most.
If someone has a site about nuclear physics or quantum mechanics or loads of
other topics, do I get hot under the collar if I can't understand it? Is it
reasonable to expect that I should be able to understand it? Answers on a
pixel, please.


It's clear and simple that the person who thought up that one hadn't
done much work with people with even moderate learning difficulties: any
content suitable for that audience would be tedious in the extreme for
everyone else. Teachers don't write the same materials to suit the whole
ability range, so why would web designers? I'm not sure about US newspapers,
but here in the UK, the 'middle of the road' newspaper has a policy of
making all its articles fit a 'reading age of 12 years'. Above that we have
what were called the 'broadsheets', below that the Sun and the Star. Each
written not only for an audience of particular political/ideological
persuasions, but with a different intellectual profile in mind: no
one-size-fits-all.

I think I was teaching for about five years before I realised that plenty of
children who seem to be able to read are only reading 'mechanically' - they
haven't a clue what the words or phrases actually mean. When watching
'mainline' films (="movies") many absolutely haven't a clue what it's all
about. In fact, my school had a couple of actors following the 'bottom first
years' (age c12) round for a day: it was certainly an eye opener for them!
It may be theoretically possible to accommodate most (all?) sorts of
physical differences in one site, but extremely unlikely to accommodate a
wide range of learning differences and retain interest and stickability for
both extremes.

Did anyone ever show w3c the requirement that their site should be 'clear
and simple'? (Does the w3c still have 'live links' to the page you're on?)

Slainte

Liz

--
Virtual Liz now at http://www.v-liz.com
Kenya; Tanzania; Namibia; India; Seychelles; Galapagos
"I speak of Africa and golden joys"

In message <rc3pq096i6hprevalpfuoi80veudb096mn (AT) 4ax (DOT) com>
Michael Fesser <netizen (AT) gmx (DOT) net> wrote:

.oO(Karl Core)

In its strictest form, accessibility is often defined as "whether a
disabled person can gain access to the resource".

Why restrict it to the disabled? Many websites are inaccessible even for
non-disabled users (lack of plugins or client-side scripting for
example).

We already had an example at the w/e of a guy claiming his site was
accessible, when it probably wasn't.
I've just been browsing my current 'recommended books' at amazon (uk)
One of them is a book called "Building Accessible Websites" by Joe Clark,
recommended by Zeldman in "Designing with Web standards"

A User review says, inter alia:
"The typefaces are too small and not very clear. I am very surprised that
Clark has not considered that some readers' ... eyes are not what they used
to be.
....info is not chunked into easy to read pieces or (with) proper
headings...
....Clark says NOT to use Arial. Dyslexics would disagree with this. It is
one of their favourite fonts".

OK, this is a book, not a website, and the author may not have had full
control over the design/layout, but it's not very encouraging in a book
purporting to be about accessibility!


On the other topic, the book I most like about Usability is Steve Krug's
"Don't Make Me Think". It's a book which is clear and simple: some people
might think it's too simple (every now and then I dip into the 'polar bear
book' (forget it's name: Information Architecture or somesuch): that's a
perfect illustration of the impossibility of being 'meaty' enough to satisfy
some, but simple enough to be understood by the 'many'.

Slainte

Liz
--
Virtual Liz now at http://www.v-liz.com Kenya; Tanzania; Namibia;
India; Seychelles; Galapagos "I speak of Africa and golden joys"

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Liz wrote:

But 'making content understandable' is irrelevant to many sites, and
impossible for most.

Your point is well taken, but I think you're misinterpreting the
intentions. The guidelines aren't advocating that content which is
inherently challenging should be dumbed-down - to the detriment of
those who *would* be able to understand it; they're asking that the
content, whatever it might be, is expressed and presented in an
understandable and accessible way that's consistent with its inherent
level of difficulty.

Sure: I'm not claiming that it's easy to do that. But at least it
makes some kind of sense, whereas your interpretation of their agenda
- as your own argument has shown - would set a task that is simply not
feasible; indeed to a significant extent it would be self-
contradictory.

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:39:40 GMT, Liz <invalid (AT) v-liz (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

In message <3140arF35b50sU1 (AT) individual (DOT) net
"nice.guy.nige" <nigel_moss (AT) deadspam (DOT) com> wrote:

From section 2.2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidlines (1.0);

"Content developers should make content understandable and navigable.
This
includes not only making the language clear and simple."

High aims indeed.
But 'making content understandable' is irrelevant to many sites, and
impossible for most.
If someone has a site about nuclear physics or quantum mechanics or
loads of
other topics, do I get hot under the collar if I can't understand it? Is
it
reasonable to expect that I should be able to understand it?

To take this a few steps further, for an illiterate and deaf person, all
sites with text are inaccessible and cannot be repaired.

To understand any site requires a prerequisite of education. What makes a
site inacessible in this area is poor grammar, unnecessarily dense
language, or other matters which can be reasonably corrected. This does
not mean we must never have sites on technical matters, or on a finer
point of history or sociology which requires a background of knowledge to
understand.

Just because you, with your scientific background, cannot understand a
page does not in itself make the page not "understandable".

Answers on a
pixel, please.

It's a big pixel. Sorry.

It's clear and simple that the person who thought up that one hadn't
done much work with people with even moderate learning difficulties: any
content suitable for that audience would be tedious in the extreme for
everyone else. Teachers don't write the same materials to suit the whole
ability range, so why would web designers?

This is an important point. One page on Abraham Lincoln cannot satisfy
both the 10-year-old looking for information for his first research
project and the grad student seeking specifics for a thesis. Clearly one
or the other, or yet another, target must be decided. However, the
language should be clear and understandable for that target.

I'm not sure the intent here is to make one content which is useful to
everyone - in fact it's extremely likely your page will face a healthy
percentage of internet users who will never have use for your site.

I think I was teaching for about five years before I realised that
plenty of
children who seem to be able to read are only reading 'mechanically' -
they
haven't a clue what the words or phrases actually mean. When watching
'mainline' films (="movies") many absolutely haven't a clue what it's all
about. In fact, my school had a couple of actors following the 'bottom
first
years' (age c12) round for a day: it was certainly an eye opener for
them!

As a teacher as well, comprehension must be a major component of any
literacy education, of course. We live in a time where people don't have
the time to read to their children, where everything goes so fast we
cannot hope to keep up. This is not the place, however, to go into how we
should teach literacy, except to say that the strategies have been
improving and need to continue to improve.

It may be theoretically possible to accommodate most (all?) sorts of
physical differences in one site, but extremely unlikely to accommodate a
wide range of learning differences and retain interest and stickability
for
both extremes.

Agreed - so the correct strategy must be to decide on a target and write
for it. A site selling Hello Kitty stuff and an in-depth discussion of the
character analysis of a Shakespeare play will certainly have little
overlap in their target audience. (And I don't think either target would
expect the other site to be a "comfortable" read.) A page comparing the
concepts of Machiavelli to modern-day governments might be written to
either target, depending on the intent of the authors.

Essentially, what the above accessibility guideline expresses is a
sensitivity to the readability issue, and a directive to do whatever is
practical to make the copy understandable to as wide a target audience as
is possible, while still not compromising the purpose of the page.

Neal <neal413 (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

A site selling Hello Kitty stuff and an in-depth discussion of the
character analysis of a Shakespeare play will certainly have little
overlap in their target audience. (And I don't think either target would
expect the other site to be a "comfortable" read.)

On the other hand, some of the fan sites about TV shows (including
kids' shows), created by and for the more obsessive fans, *do* get
very in-depth in their character analyses, to an extent resembling
that of Shakespearean critics. I'm not sure if Hello Kitty has ever
gotten that treatment; the TV Tome section on it is relatively sparse:
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet...t/showid-7999/

Some other kid and teen shows have much more detailed sections,
especially when you dig down into the episode reviews:
http://www.tvtome.com/LizzieMcGuire/

--
Dan