Accessibility and Usability – can we combine the easiness of Google with the functionality of Amazon?

To start with, Amazon and Google do not follow the WCAG 1.0 Accessibility guidelines according to the simple tests I tried. When you deal with search engines (like this two), it can get even more complicated when you do a search. I count library OPACs and library portals as search engines here. You need to have a tool where you can analyze a hit list page after you done a search. If you use a tool in which you only put in the starting page you will probably not get adequate results in these kinds of web applications. That is because these sites are interactive applications and not restricted to static pages.

Tools like Cynthia and Wave can do a test on a specific page. Of course you need to be very careful analyzing the results from this kind of tools. Are they up to date? Are they WCAG1.0 or WCAG2.0 compliant? Are their alerts/warnings adequate for the screen (-reading) tools your users have. You also have to be aware that automated testing does not cover all accessibility guidelines. A number still require manual testing to be performed. With these tools I also tried the new web/discovery portals from library vendors on the Swedish market and did not find anyone who managed to be alert and error free. The Bibliotek24 had a clean error report in Wave (there were some alerts) but failed in Cynthia. This is a service which just works with search and hits. No interaction except search. No “fancy” 2.0 stuff. All others (tested) had a lot of warnings/alerts and all had some errors. So apparently when our company is saying that we will deliver WCAG AA (priority 2) level on our Arena web platform in our November version (this year!) it seems to be a bolder statement than I first thought. We do have the experience though with OPAC installations in UK which are delivered to meet the WCAG AA. These UK OPACs are functionally rich platforms.

The new web/discovery portals, like Arena, which interest the libraries today are, if flexible enough, of course another kind of challenge. And if you like to add flash, flair and tingle-tangle to the already multi functional possibilities you need to be careful about it so that it will not disturb the main services (you could present alternative pages). When you as a vendor deliver a product with a lot of flexibility it of course makes it easy for the customer to introduce non compliant functions/pages. It is then up to the customer to value the need and the accessibility compliance.
 

In Axiell we are since some time executing usability tests on Arena. We are noticing that a lot of the test persons would like to have “cleaner” pages in the test situation. When e g looking at the Google site you are impressed by how simple and elegant it does it’s work. But then Google is a two step task procedure. Google are abandoning, naturally, the user as soon as it comes to the real content. But even Google are introducing more functionality by adding small links to every search hit. They are still a two click service but with some outreaching opportunities. Amazon is another story, but then also an interactive, multi rich and customer inclusive web site. So do people manage this kind of site? Well, apparently. After some tough starting years Amazon is a profitable site with a supposedly growing customer base. Combining the elegant solution in Google with the richness of Amazon is of course an almost impossible task but with continuing usability tests in a constant dialogue with our customers we will improve the solution over time. You are our partners and judges in this.
 

			Written by : Boris Ukotic Zetterlund Categories : accesibility usability Comments : Read comments   Write a comment