Re: accessibility and usability

Barbara,

I think Roy has the best explanation. Put simply, Accessability is about
making the web accessable to as wide a range of users as possible, whereas
Usability is about making that experience as easy and smooth as possible.

There is an overlap and the differences are subtle, but they are there.

In a real world disability context, Accessibility means the same thing -
providing access to places & services to a wider range of people, ie. ramps
rather than steps to a building. Usability probably has a equivalent role in
r/l too - maybe signs & directions in the same building...

Chris

"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?

TIA
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[top post fixed; please do not top post in your reply]

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:43:04 -0000, CJM <cjmwork (AT) yahoo (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

"Barbara de Zoete" <b_de_zoete (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote in message
newspsh9r8n0gx5vgts (AT) zoete_b (DOT) .
[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?

I think Roy has the best explanation. Put simply, Accessability is about
making the web accessable to as wide a range of users as possible,
whereas
Usability is about making that experience as easy and smooth as possible.

There is an overlap and the differences are subtle, but they are there.

In a real world disability context, Accessibility means the same thing -
providing access to places & services to a wider range of people, ie.
ramps rather than steps to a building. Usability probably has a
equivalent role in r/l too - maybe signs & directions in the same
building...

I think I encountered a rather good example of passing for accessibility
yet failing in usibility area in r/l yesterday. In the Netherlands a
parking place usualy is identified with a large white P on a blue
background. Yesterday I saw a parking place with a huge white P placed on
a black background. The environment it was in (on the face of a greyish
building) played a role as to whether one would recognise this too.
I think, had I been in that town by car for the first time, nervously
navigating through havy traffic, looking for a good place to park, I would
not notice this sign at all, even if it is over three by four meters in
size. The parking place itself is very accessible to a car once you know
it's there.

Another is some trafic signs along the highway saying 'Amsterdam volg Den
Haag'. My guess is that certainly to foreigners this will be hard to
understand if not impossible, but even to Dutch people this might be
beyond any logic and therefore is not clear at all. The road to Amsterdam
is open and the city is therefore accessible (if no road works or traffic
jam ;-) ).
Finally an example is the sign in airports (and other places) with an icon
of a male and another one of a female (sometimes both enclosed in[*]). I
know that they mean: toilet for men, toilet for women. Other cultures (is
it South America?) would not know at all what these icons are for and
therefore have to ask for the toilet everytime they need one and are in a
Dutch (European?) airport.

If all these various examples are about navigating through a site, one can
say the individual pages of a site (the parking place, the city of
Amsterdam, the toilets at the airport) are well accessible, but the design
is hard to use, so people might fail to notice all these different things
are there.
As with any anology this is incomplete and fails easily, one can easily
say I miss the point and show where I go wrong. But I am satisfied with my
understanding of accessibility and usability as it is now.

Thanks all,

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