Accessibility Survey for UsabilityNews Readers... and Others

UsabilityNews founder Dave Clarke and editor Ann Light are collaborating with Claire Paddison of the Ease of Use team at IBM Warwick on the UsabilityNews Accessibility Project (UNAP). First sign of this is a survey for readers and potential readers - do pass this invitation on to colleagues and anyone you think might be interested, and do fill it in. The web-based survey is at the address below and will remain there till the end of February.

'The UNAP web survey will enable us to gain valuable feedback from present and potential readers so we can continue to build and improve upon the services we offer,' says Clarke.

Once the project has feedback from users, the intention is to make UsabilityNews more accessible. We will also be using IBM's accessibility heuristics to identify, categorise and prioritise problems with the current design. The design will then be modified to comply more tightly with standards published by W3C, and to reflect best known practice.

Paddison says that the problem with much accessibility work is that software tools alone can only detect superficial problems: 'To find the real errors, you need to involve a human evaluator capable of applying insight and experience'. See the related UN story: Designing Accessible Products and also IBM's accessibility webpages: www.ibm.com/able. The project will run in one form or another most of the year, and as developments take place, they will be reported here.

There is also scope to determine if readers have requirements for access on mobile devices, for instance, UN could be made available on PDAs. 'I'm an avid fan of PDAs - I have a Palm, Psion and a Bluetooth enabled IPAQ! - and use of such devices for off-line reading, for example, can be invaluable,' says Clarke.

The results of the survey and the recommended improvements will be summarised on UN and published in full as part of HCI2003 in September (see details of the forthcoming conference at: HCI 2003: Designing for Society - Bath). Just click below to contribute...

Associated Link: The UNAP Survey

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