In this post I’ll take a look at what’s being done to make the web easier for visually impaired people to use, and share some insights gained during a visit to the founders of Usability.gov, who have been leading the way in user testing research for accessibility.
People with visual impairments navigate the web much differently than people with normal vision. They rely on special software like screen magnifiers, screen readers and Braille printers to browse and interact. But if the web is often frustrating for users with sight, it can be outright impossible at times for those who can’t see the screen. Some websites perform quite well, while others have problems that amount to dead ends for the visually impaired.
In spite of these frustrations, people with disabilities report having more positive feelings about the Internet than do non-disabled Internet users. Why? Whatever the Internet’s shortcomings, it provides much greater access to news, information, communication & other interactions than was available before. Today the term “accessibility” generally refers to a website’s ease of use for the visually impaired.
Who’s leading the way?
The Federal government has been leading the way in establishing standards for making websites accessible. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998 required all federal agency websites to comply with a set of standards by June 21, 2001, and sets guidelines for accessibility for many technologies, including the web.
What does Section 508 require?
I’ve paraphrased some of Section 508’s key website requirements below.
- Provide text equivalents for all non-text page elements.
- Keep text alternatives to any multimedia components in sync with multimedia version.
- Make sure any information conveyed through color is also available without color.
- Provide row and column headers for all data tables.
- Make pages readable without requiring a style sheet.
- Use client side image-maps except where regions cannot be defined with an available geometric shape.
- Provide a readable description of any interface elements created by scripting languages.
- Provide a method for skipping repetitive navigation links
- For online forms, identify all field titles and input elements, and ensure that all directions, cues, features or functions required to complete the form will work with assistive technology.
Does 508 make a difference?
At a recent web application conference in Boston hosted by User Interface Engineering, Mary Theofanos of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, shared some elements NCI has learned about making websites truly accessible. Theofanos is head of NCI’s Communication Technologies Research Center (CTRC) and one of the founders of Usability.gov. This website was developed by CTRC to help “provide current and accurate information on how to make health-related information Web sites and other user interfaces more usable, accessible and useful.” Theofanos’ presentation highlighted the fact that simple compliance with the 508 standards does not ensure a site will be easy for visually impaired visitors to use. This is especially true for interactive web applications.
An exciting aspect of Usability.gov and CTRC’s work is that almost all of it is equally valuable for companies and other organizations involved in web development. The usability and accessibility research they conduct has direct application for any type of website.
My visit to the NCI Communication Technologies Research Center
I visited Theofanos at the CTRC lab in Rockville, MD shortly after her presentation, to learn more about what she and her colleagues are doing to improve the accessibility of government and other websites. She elaborated on the sorts of problems they are seeing, how users are getting around obstacles, and what tools they are developing to help site owners prioritize accessibility issues.
How has CTRC contributed to accessibility efforts?
Theofanos said that in the first year of CTRC’s work with accessibility they focused on training and helping government agencies understand technical compliance with Section 508. After the June 2001 milestone had passed, they began looking at real usability for the disabled.
Theofanos found that there was little user testing for accessibility in the usability and human computer interaction community. A search of available literature and conference proceedings yielded few results. . CTRC has since taken up that challenge and led the way in conducting research and developing guidelines for making sites accessible and usable beyond technical compliance with Section 508.
What CTRC has learned through user testing about how visually impaired users navigate & use the web
One significant finding CTRC testers uncovered is that visually impaired users have distinct approaches to navigating pages. They tend to know more than a “sighted” user would about the structure of the page, since that understanding is crucial to their ability to navigate. Theofanos and her colleagues have seen visually-impaired users employ the following strategies:
- Scanning with their ears
- Listening only to headers (this requires that text be tagged as a header)
- Listening only to links (creates problems when link isn’t self-descriptive)
- Using CTRL+F to find key words
- Using a virtual viewer, which gives a structural summary of the page
Screen readers continue to improve, facilitating these navigation techniques and making it easier for users to get an overall sense of page structure and content. You can imagine the problems a user faces, though, when visiting a newspaper site that has 300-400 links and no header tags. Many common navigational strategies fail on a site like this, and users either wade through or find a site friendlier to their needs.
In spite of these obstacles, visually impaired users have been willing to fight with websites longer than sighted users generally will. There still comes a point, though, when even these users will give up.
What guidelines has CTRC found to help make websites more usable for the visually impaired?
- Use an HTML Syntax checker to ensure code is clean. Some bad code will still render correctly in a web browser but will not work in the screen readers.
- Use a checklist during development. The W3C has published a helpful checklist at http://www.w3.org/WAI
- Use an automated tool to detect compliance. Both Adobe and Macromedia provide tools for use with their products, and there are several others. Another popular tool, Bobby, offers both a free web-based checking service and a commercial desktop program. Find more compliance checking tools at http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=122
- Use screen readers to listen to the site. JAWS is one of the most popular, although it is expensive.
- Users don’t trust “text-only” versions of sites because they are often out of date, therefore it’s better to make you’re the regular site accessible.
- Above all, conduct testing with visually impaired users!
Some guidelines specific to web-based forms:
- Make sure users can tab from field to field in the right order
- Label all fields clearly and distinctly
- Position “submit” function at end of form
- Avoid auto-fill, where a text field fills in automatically after typing only a few characters
- Use proper coding for max field lengths
How readily have other government agencies adopted these recommendations?
There are groups within other Federal agencies that are focused on usability, including the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, and the Social Security Administration. Each of these has their own testing labs and collaborate to a degree. The CTRC lab is open to any government agency for testing, and is regularly used by agencies other than the NIH. The guidelines developed by CTRC and published on Usability.gov are non-binding recommendations, and it is up to individual agencies to take advantage of them.
One of the challenges in a litigious society is that as soon as something is published as a “guideline” or “standard,” you become potentially liable if you don’t follow it. This can actually be a hindrance to improving accessibility, because executives may be cautious about promoting guidelines that might expose them to lawsuits. For this reason the CTRC is being diplomatic with its recommendations, in hopes that agencies can make real improvements without additional legislation.
How does all of this apply to companies and other organizations?
Section 508 applies to all government agencies, but it also is being stipulated as a requirement for companies and organizations that do business with the federal government. It is in every company or organization’s best interest to make accessibility a real priority. According to Theofanos, the benefits extend far beyond just doing business with the government. They include:
- Access to significant market. According to the American Foundation for the Blind, approximately 10 million Americans are blind or visually impaired. Of these, about 1.5 million use computers, and 1 million are online.
- Search engine positioning. Almost all of the techniques required for accessibility will improve position in the major search engines.
- Overall improved usability. Techniques such as good headers, clearly written links and smart page structure are also basic principles for usability that apply equally to sighted users.
Hopefully web developers will realize they have much more to consider in order to achieve real accessibility than just technical compliance with Section 508. The actual steps aren’t even that hard; the most important thing is “seeing” their sites from a whole new perspective.
Learn More
Learn more about Section 508: http://www.section508.gov/