I ran a usability report and received a fair number of errors.
My question is how much should I care?
If 1 is “do it when you feel like it, it really doesn’t matter” and 5 is “freedom and democracy will end if you don’t fix it now” what number should I be looking at?
The site seems to work fine, I’m getting a decent number of hits. It just seems like working through all this will be like balancing a checkbook!
I think it depends on why usability is important to your project – is it a
checklist thing to be ticked off to satisfy regulation or requirements, or
is there real concern over how usable the site truly is to the whole
community?
Coming from the print industry, I can’t count how many times a government
agency demanded their paper “look” recycled or have the words “Printed on
Recycled Paper” even though the paper wasn’t recycled. Especially if they
didn’t want to pay the recycled paper price. Usability in design is quite
similar… it can sometimes be only for appearances.
I’d say if you really care about honestly good design, or about how the
whole community experiences your design, then you already know the answer
to your question
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Ernie Simpson
On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Mark email@hidden wrote:
I ran a usability report and received a fair number of errors.
My question is how much should I care?
If 1 is “do it when you feel like it, it really doesn’t matter” and 5 is
“freedom and democracy will end if you don’t fix it now” what number should
I be looking at?
The site seems to work fine, I’m getting a decent number of hits. It just
seems like working through all this will be like balancing a checkbook!
I guess that’s my question, thanks for that perspective!
I didn’t know if those error messages meant that it really affects the functionality of the site to people, or if the usability errors really only affected the robots that constantly scan the site.
Both are obviously important.
Is it the norm that a site would have no error messages? (Which again goes back to your response about how one fits into the world!!! Or how one wants to fit into the world!)
On my accessibility report virtually all the errors are the same for every page, and they concern my roll over buttons at the top of my pages (going from the item numbers).
There are three of them:
Alt text may contain an image file name or default item name. (11 examples listed)
Alt text should be between 8 and 80 characters: (5 examples listed)
Links on map areas must be repeated on text (7 examples listed)
My roll over buttons seem to work well, and I can’t seem to find an explanation as to what these problems are.
Imagine how your site is accessed by non-visual devices. I think the
answers will present themselves when you do this.
Alt text may contain an image file name or default item name. (11
examples listed)
By default Freeway Pro fills the alt field with the name of the image file.
You need to put something more descriptive in these alt fields, like a very
brief description of the image. Imagine how you would describe the image to
a blind person and type that into the image’s alt field. In less than 80
characters.
Alt text should be between 8 and 80 characters: (5 examples listed)
This is self-explanatory, combined with my answer to #1.
Links on map areas must be repeated on text (7 examples listed)
Image maps are visual links which are useless to non-visual users. Having
text links in addition to image links solves this issue.
That is helpful for images on my pages which give that error. But the error messages also apply to my roll over navigation buttons. So I assume I’d write “home button” for home, etc? (That actually makes sense, now that I think about it! And it’s more than 8 letters!) I was sort of worried about renaming only one of the three parts/layers of the graphic button, but it probably doesn’t make a bit of difference does it?
The text links (for error message: Links on map areas…) is also under the Graphic tab in the inspector? Do I need to rename both the “link alt text” field AND the “combined graphic” field?
Thanks again Ernie. I really enjoyed your first response. Get your blog back up, I’d like to read it!
When the error message cites 3f1b, then I need to separate out the graphic layers which create my navigation buttons and then change that specific graphic item? Then put them all back together again, right?
Well, remember the report is not itself a certificate, but is helping you
to understand how to make your site more accessible to certain members of
the community. Like a wheelchair ramp.
If you choose not to build that extra usability into the site, that is
totally up to you. Unless someone is asking you to meet a certain standard,
in which case you’ll want to build that functionality in there, and
find something stronger than this report to guide you.
You may be thinking about how great your site looks… accessibility
challenges you to think about how well your site works.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 1:24 AM, Mark email@hidden wrote:
OK, I separated out the layers of buttons and added alt text, which took
away most of my error messages.
I apologize but can’t seem to do the right thing with the “Links on map
areas must be repeated on text”
Poor man’s accessibility report: View Source. Skip over anything in the , and ignore any other text that’s inside angle-brackets outside of the head. Read whatever text you encounter out loud. Did what you said make any sense?
Thanks for your responses. I guess I had hoped that changing alt text areas would clear up the “links on maps…” issue. But the error messages just includes what I have entered in those fields.
But I guess it also doesn’t really matter. I need to learn not to obsess on stuff like this.
I’m not sure if it is native to Lion’s Safari or if I installed something,
but my Safari browser has a “Develop” menu that allows some things like
Disable Styles, Disable Images, Disable Scripts – I know there is a plugin
for Firefox that is similar. Using those kind of features will give you a
quick and simple user experience of your site’s accessibility. When your
site is understandable and usable regardless of whether graphics/styles are
enabled, you will have increased it’s accessibility. At that point the alt
tags and such are just frosting.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 9:15 AM, waltd email@hidden wrote:
Poor man’s accessibility report: View Source. Skip over anything in the
, and ignore any other text that's inside angle-brackets outside of
the head. Read whatever text you encounter out loud. Did what you said make
any sense?
I use the Safari Developer Tools all the time. Invaluable!
David
On 23 Jun 2012, at 15:34, Ernie Simpson email@hidden wrote:
I’m not sure if it is native to Lion’s Safari or if I installed something,
but my Safari browser has a “Develop” menu that allows some things like
Disable Styles, Disable Images, Disable Scripts
I sent my site to Freeway to see why I was getting the “links on maps must be repeated on text:” issue.
They wrote back to say that the cause was using graphic items to make the roll over navigation buttons, and using things like rounded corners and semi transparent borders (which I did). To make them accessible, and solve the “links on maps” issue, they need to be made in a different way.
I’m just posting this answer in case anyone searches for this problem in the future.
