If empathy is about understanding people, accessibility is about understanding people and the barriers that they face. Getting your own experience of accessibility helps you to put yourself in the shoes of others and keep accessibility in mind when building and testing your sites and applications.
In this talk, Jon Gibbins gives a practical introduction to accessibility for front end designers and developers. He will walk through some typical accessibility barriers and situations where an accessible user experience does not necessarily come from simply adhering to accessibility guidelines. Find out how you can easily experience accessibility for yourself using something you likely have in your pocket – a smartphone. Leave with some tips under your belt and a grasp of some technical fundamentals that are often the missing piece of the puzzle for developers' understanding of accessibility.
7. “Getting your own experience of
accessibility helps you to put
yourself in the shoes of others and
keep accessibility in mind when
building and testing your sites and
applications”
– Jon Gibbins, Nov 2007
48. Writing style
• Make your point clear first then explain
• One point per paragraph
• Use short line lengths wherever possible
• Helps people who are deaf, have dyslexia, dementia
or other cognitive and learning disabilities
49.
50. CAPS
• Harder to read (dyslexia)
• Shouting, caps can cause different reading by
screen readers
53. Compound words
Compound words are commonplace
• Homepage
• Sitemap
• "Signup" announced as "sig–nup" in VoiceOver iOS
Spaces and hyphens are your friends.
This is relatively new talk based on some old ideas.
I’ve been thinking about this for around 5 years now.
It encapsulates my take on accessibility.
Please excuse my hearing… and my tiredness!
Digital accessibility consultant on web and mobile
Training, testing, development, UX, mentoring, policy and organisational change
Self-taught web developer since 1999
Digital accessibility since 2003
Mobile specialist since 2012
Passionate about accessibility – why?
I don’t have a disability as such (wears glasses, APD, bad back)
Let me tell you the story of my journey to working with accessibility in mind
Short version: “What’s accessibility all about for me?”
Many accessibility presentations will kick off with an explanation of what accessibility is all about, why you should be thinking about it.
Corporate Social Responsibility.
The legal aspects (ADA, 508).
The benefits.
Proven Return On Investment
You may have heard that the Internet’s biggest blind user is Google.
Accessibility is good for SEO.
Accessibility can save you time and helps make your applications more robust. No, really! Adding accessibility into applications makes automated testing easy.
There’s a good case study for the business case from Legal & General (http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/legal-and-general-case-study)
Developers:
Often see accessibility as having to jump through hoops for little gain.
It’s such a hassle.
Why should I do it?
For me:
It’s a challenge.
It’s on a par with testing, security and documentation. You don’t have to do it, but you should.
I think it’s cool!
Most importantly, I’ve seen what accessibility can do.
I’m going to kick off with why I do accessibility…
Jon’s earliest experience of “geek”
Smart watches / phones:
Jon first saw these in a book in the 80s and thought, “Woah, that’s pretty cool!”
Technology is cool! But also enabling!
LG watch phone: 1.3 inch full touch screen, 3G+ connectivity, video call capabilities, Voice recognition software, Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, MP3 player.
Jon’s first experience of accessibility – a talking clock used by his blind mother.
Jon has a passion for music. He plays guitar, sings, writes songs…
At university, he got to work with disabled musicians to develop accessible music composition and performance software.
The point is that we need to think outside the box a little.
We need to find ways to empathise.
And that’s what this experience with disabled musicians did.
November 2007
Started assembling my accessibility video tour.
Needs updating, but still helpful to understand how the technology is used.
https://lab.dotjay.com/notes/assistive-technology/videos/
Why is getting your own experience important?
Another way to talk about accessibility is through analogies. I like analogies.
Any parents in the audience?
More on analogies:
https://dotjay.com/2007/11/analogies-for-accessibility
You don’t know what it’s like unless you experience it for yourself.
You can get an idea of what it's like from friends, but you don't know it until you become a parent yourself.
Experiencing assistive technology for yourself or taking part in disability simulations won’t tell you what it’s like to be disabled.
You cannot simulate disability effectively enough to understand what it is like to live with any disability.
Robin Eames on Twitter last week:
https://twitter.com/robinmarceline/status/1039311147738906624
https://twitter.com/robinmarceline/status/1039321725756891136
Experiencing digital accessibility helps *build empathy* with your users, 20% of which have some form of disability.
[Statistic is for England & Wales, 2011]
Accessibility is not all about code or compliance; it’s about people.
Out of interest, do we have people with a disability here today?
Jon wears glasses
Jon’s mum went blind
Jon’s dad has Alzheimer’s disease
Jon has friends who are deaf
How many smart phones in pockets?
How many iOS
How many Android?
Others?
Of particular interest to Jon… mobile accessibility:
Small screens
40-pixel (7mm+) finger is big on small targets
Can be hard to reach some parts of the screen
Small text sizes is like having low vision
Small input devices
Tiny keys
Environment (hands-free, noise, rain)
Eyes-free usage, e.g. in car, is like being blind
More on mobile later.
I don’t know about you, but everyone I know is ageing.
As we get older, we are likely to experience multiple disabilities of different types.
Who can think of their own story about accessibility?
I like to get good balance and something for everyone.
What roles do we have in the room?
How many developers? How many testers?
Who is not technical?
Who has some knowledge of accessibility?
Who has used a mobile screen reader?
WCAG?
I’m not going to talk about compliance or the law today, unless you ask me to.
Inclusion and accessibility is about people, not laws or even just code.
Important!
For me, accessibility is as important as security, or performance, or documenting your code.
Who are disabled people?
Blind
Screen reader users
Need text equivalents for everything
Keyboard access is essential
Page structure is really important
https://youtube.com/watch?v=L962p6fzF7Y
Partially sighted
Need to be able to control text size
Contrast must be good
Large areas of white space can be a nuisance
Hearing loss
Deaf = Deaf community ∴ sign language more likely to be first language (BSL instead of English, for example)
Need visual equivalents for any audio
Spinal injury such as paraplegia, quadriplegia
Cerebral palsy
Parkinson’s disease
Mobility impaired
Small targets can be difficult to use
Might not be able to use a mouse
May not even be able to use a keyboard
https://youtube.com/watch?v=cSSgndQ5mVs
Cognitively impaired
Remove distractions
Break content up into sections
Use clear fonts
Do not justify text
Disabled people don’t always fall neatly into the 4 main disability types
People have diverse needs
Equally, people may use a diverse range of access tech and settings
Older users, for example, could fall into any of the above groupings (limited dexterity, hearing and vision)
Ageing
We are all subject to ageing
Spans various disabilities and user groups
Often first-time users
Note: Older people, like young children, find primary solid color easier to see and draw meaning from than pastel colors, etc.
Hidden disabilities
Often, we have images of people with extreme disabilities in mind (totally blind, amputees, wheelchair users, totally deaf, etc.)
Many of us have mild disabilities (e.g. people who wear glasses) or hidden disabilities
Dyslexia
Chronic fatigue / pain (fibromyalgia)
Epilepsy
Photo sensitivity
Temporary disability
Broken bones, e.g. someone with a broken arm cannot use a mouse.
Repetitive strain injury
Tiredness
Situational limitation
Hands-free while driving.
Hearing a phone call in noisy environments.
Touch screen devices in bright light or wet weather.
Small keyboards require dexterity.
Notice the difference of “limitation” as opposed to “disability” (https://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/wiki/Situational_terminology)
Terms like “device disabled” or “situational disability” dilutes the definition of disability and accessibility.
Cultural inclusion
Language; not everyone understands English.
Colours have different meanings or associations all over the world. Red is often associated with stop, errors, or passion in Western cultures. In China, red can relate to celebration or good luck.
Even shape and iconography
Technology
Particular software and hardware requirements or preferences
User requirements can be diverse.
Technology issues include user preference, for a particular hardware feature, for example. You cannot account for user preference, you can only build for flexibility.
Mobile users can be limited by data allowances.
Vision impairment
Uses a screen reader or screen magnifier
Physical impairment
Only use a keyboard, may use voice recognition software and/or switch access
Equally, people may use a diverse range of different access technology and settings
Deaf or hard of hearing
Requires captions for audio content
Let’s look at a simple example, just to make a point.
Text alternatives provide equivalent information for users who cannot access the information in the content (image)
The problem: people without vision cannot perceive content without text
Screen reader users
Text browsers
Search engines
Low bandwidth users
Misconception: “I must always add alternative text”
“Fell logo jiff”
Note: Decorative and redundant images may also be presented through CSS – no alternative text needed.
Use the simple alternative text decision tree
Another reason that experiencing accessibility is important.
It helps you better understand the context.
Experience is the first step towards understanding.
Without experience, poor choices are made.
Without understanding, things you design or build may be inappropriate or incoherent.
Here’s an example of an incoherent.
Photo
Just because you add something “accessible”, doesn’t mean that it makes sense.
Design stage is important for establishing context and making sense of the answers before they become problems.
In short, plenty.
The guidelines don’t tell you everything.
There are some fun things that can go wrong.
Here’s another example of where someone added something to make life easier for users, but ended up causing havoc.
Keyboard access and focus:
Logical order is generally left to right, top to bottom
Adding tabindex values of >0 can cause strange focus order
Generally best to let the order of elements in the source code determine the focus order
The guidelines don’t tell you everything…
Use short line lengths: seven to ten words per line (WCAG 80 characters long)
Considerations for deaf people
WCAG covers subtitles and captioning, and even sign language
BUT must realise that for members of the Deaf community, English (or any "native" language) is a second language.
Techniques for the The Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force (COGA)
See W3C COGA Techniques (Working Draft)
We have language selection in WCAG, but what about pronunciation?
Something that often gets missed is the text itself – the words we use.
Clear text is essential to providing good user experiences for all users, but especially for users of assistive technology such as screen readers.
Using semantic markup helps
But screen readers can still get things wrong
Notes:
Screen reader software takes text found on screen – on a website, for example – and tries to create synthetic speech from it to help people understand what's on the screen. Think of Stephen Hawking's speech synthesizer (http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-computer.html).
Problems arise when the software can't quite figure out what is meant by the text it finds.
Certain text does not result in clearly understandable announcements from screen readers. While not a requirement under WCAG 2.0, these things should be considered for the best user experience for people who use assistive technologies.
Not just an issue for screenreader users, but also people with dyslexia.
Many compound words have become so commonplace that they have become acceptable in day-to-day use:
bookmark
grandfather
newspaper
weekend
website
An interesting thing to note in VoiceOver: it sometimes reads numbers strangely.
So, accessibility is contextual.
How do we best build for accessibility then?!
Why am I picking out mobile accessibility here?
Easily available – iOS and (most) Android devices
Quick to learn
Good way to get experience of AT
Great for quick testing on actual AT
“Mainstream” features with accessibility benefits
SMS
Video calls
Voice assistants, such as Siri, Cortana, etc.
FaceTime used by deaf people
Custom vibrations as ringtone equivalents
Speeches given using iPad with Proloquo
HueVue app that helps color blind people identify colors
Braille:
V-B-Reader app (Android) that enables Braille to be read using vibrating touch screens
Touch-screen Braille writer
Innovative assistive technology that’s useful to all users!
Apple’s Siri voice recognition
Google Voice’s voicemail transcription
Custom vibrations (iPhone setting and Android app)
Shared experiences comparable to temporary disability
in the car (blind)
at concerts (hard of hearing)
small text (low vision)
“fat fingers” on small screens / keyboards (hand tremors)
broken bones (crutches)
http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences
Opportunity
For users
Cheaper technology
Easier to learn
Easier to access services
For business
Reaching as wide an audience as possible
Reaching untapped spending power
Modern mobile devices have a wide variety of accessibility features built in, particularly iOS and Android.
Let’s just take a look at screen readers.
We’ll look at “explore by touch” first; gesture navigation is explained in the next slide. Also, more general notes about these interaction methods are in the notes on the next slide.
Explore by touch:
is spatial
requires users to become aware of the layout of a page/screen
can be tedious for general use and things can be missed by users
but is by far the best way to interact with on-screen keyboards and is a bit like touch typing
Focus: Slightly different concept on mobile than on desktop.
Gesture navigation:
is sequential, typically following the reading order of a page/screen
allows users to interact with one element of a page/screen at a time, similar to how you interact with the keyboard on desktop applications
uses a virtual focus cursor, which is roughly equivalent to keyboard focus and tabbing around an interface
often makes more sense to users (provided reading order makes sense) and things are less likely to be missed
Both of these methods are now used in iOS and Android
Both methods available in iOS since iPhone OS 3 was released with the iPhone 3GS in June 2009
Android TalkBack Explore by Touch mode available since Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in October 2011
Android TalkBack Gesture mode available since Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) in June 2012
Gesture navigation on Android does not behave in exactly the same way as VoiceOver on iOS, but it is similar
These interaction methods are becoming a de facto standard on mobile devices
We know what assistive technology is, but how does it work?
Accessibility APIs
Often the missing piece of the puzzle for developers' understanding of accessibility.
Present user interfaces as information rather than a purely graphical medium, translating an application’s user interface into information that assistive technology can understand
Allow an application’s user interface to be changed by the assistive technology
Provide a common vocabulary we can use when talking about accessibility
Accessible object properties provide information which allows multi-modal access to content.
Name, role, and state are important properties to be aware of.
Accessible Events inform assistive tech about changes to the otherwise static DOM-based representation. For example, virtual buffer in JAWS.
Accessible object properties provide information which allows multi-modal access to content.
Name, role, and state are important properties to be aware of.
Accessible Events inform assistive tech about changes to the otherwise static DOM-based representation. For example, virtual buffer in JAWS.
role: check box
name: Open new windows in a new tab instead
state: checked
An accessible name is required and identifies an object. It is short and does not necessarily describe the object.
So, why isn't this the normal approach to accessibility?
I think disability is difficult for some people to think or talk about.
People may feel uncomfortable.
I think this is down to poor understanding, social stigmas, lack of experience.
But there are more problems at play…
Don’t just be the accessibility guy/gal
Shared responsibility
Raise awareness
Teach
Learn
Think about accessibility as early as possible
Bake it into your process, wireframes, etc.
Fix accessibility before it hits the screens
Documenting accessibility as you go will help future iterations
Accessibility more likely to:
get baked into prototypes
persist through development
make it into production at an acceptable level
Accessibility in continuous integration: code linting, checks as part of release procedures, etc.
BS 8878
Not a set of development guidelines
Project management roadmap for ensuring that web products are built in an accessible way
Solutions are contextual – accessibility is contextual. Context is King, especially on mobile.
It’s not necessarily about what you know; it’s about knowing what to look up and where.
Include disabled people in personas
Different disabilities, different needs
Older people (often first time users)
Plan to test with similar people
Annotate
Fix accessibility before it hits the screens
Documenting accessibility as you go will help future iterations
Annotate wireframes with accessibility detail
Show structure, headings, labels, order
Headings
Focus order
Grouping
Structure
Colour contrast