The Truth About Usability and Accessibility

A great deal of attractive websites fail to perform simply because they lack usability or accessibility; perhaps the most commonly overlooked and misunderstood elements of web design.

Users are happy when they can easily browse your site and find what they're looking for, and unhappy when they can't. You don't want to drive users away, and if you can get them, you want to keep them.

Usability

Usability is essentially the science of applying common sense (and a touch of psychology) to interfaces and architecture. Usability can come from creating obvious and sensible navigation to placing common buttons in common locations. Usability is an invaluable resource to tap.

• Convention
  Yes, the Internet is still in its infancy, but we have already developed a variety of common conventions. Whether people know it or not, they expect certain things to be in certain locations, certain actions to provide certain behaviours, and things to look a certain way. By adhering to these conventions you will inherit usability.
• Architecture
  A lot of websites have their web pages organized according to an internal system. Big mistake. Your visitors are the customers, not senior management. You need to present your content in a way that matches how visitors think. If you understand your visitors, you can guide them to what you want them to know and do.
• Design
  We're not talking about subjective opinions, but rather age old, proven axioms. Strong alignments, well chosen complimentary colours, meaningful imagery, consistent layouts, and compartmentalized content will make your message easier to digest.

Let us do a site audit for you, and find out about your website's actual usability.

Accessibility

Don't miss potential visitors simply because your site is not accessible. Accessibility affects anyone who is NOT using a traditional computer setup. For example, handheld device users, people who want to print web pages, even for those people with diminished eyesight or a physical disability. At Apis we pride ourselves on ensuring that accessibility is maximized wherever possible.

Some accessibility best practices include:

• Text and text equivalents:
  Using text for as much of your content as possible is crucial, and using text equivalents. (e.g. ALT tags for images) also ensures that disabled users can 'read' your images if necessary.
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):
  The proper use of cascading style sheets will ensure that people can view your website in a device-independent fashion. Whether they are viewing it on a large monitor, small monitor, handheld device, or on a print-out. The ultimate goal is to separate your content from your design.
• Clear message:
  This may seem obvious, but it's a surprisingly common mistake. Content should always be simple and easy to read. Use headings, sub-headings, bulleted lists, bold and italics (sparingly) to ensure your content is scannable. Web surfers are impatient, and want what they want right now. So give it to them before someone else does.
• Appropriate use of Plug-ins:
  The use of Flash, Java, ActiveX and other plug-ins has increased dramatically over recent years. But sometimes the function of the website is compromised at the expense of a visually appealing animation or navigation structure. Users who lack the appropriate plug-ins, hardware, or connection speeds are unable to view these pages properly. Plug-ins have their place, so be sure to use them appropriately.

If you are interested in finding out how accessible your site is, contact Apis for an audit.