Several popular websites have let their homepages be customised by users. New web technologies have made it possible to add slicker customisation interfaces so more sites are allowing users to customise their pages. But, should you do the same? Will it make your website better for users or will it make it unnecessarily complicated? Will users even want this feature on your site?

Types of customisation

Currently websites offer a variety of customisation methods, allowing users to:

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Molly at DemoGirl has created a video that takes a look at several sites and their usability. On her Twitter piece, I could add a million items but one I would absolutely add is a way to do a multiple delete on the direct messages. Deleting one at a time is time consuming and my bet is that by adding a mass/select delete option, they could reduce by millions of messages.

Check out our 30+ usability tutorials.

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Imagine you’re driving along and due to a road closure you have to follow those conspicuous yellow detour signs. You’re now on an unfamiliar road, but because of the signs you confidently proceed, comfortable in trusting the arrows to tell you where you need to go.

Then there’s a roundabout and no sign. Do you turn left? Right? You’re lost and have two choices; turn back and find an alternate road you know well or blindly drive around and hope for the best.

Websites are very similar, no matter what their ultimate goal is, your site visitors need to intuitively find their way around. Too often, general website navigation and orientation disappears or changes on internal pages.

In fact, with websites this point is even more pertinent as users can just ‘evaporate’ and leave your site, instead of being forced to drive around aimlessly!

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The Usability Expert Jakob Nielsen says: “On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a web site is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a web site, they leave. If a web site’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There’s no such thing as a user reading a web site manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other web sites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.” -

Full Story: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

Is your web site usable?

There are several definitions for usability, but basically products which have the following 6 characteristics, can be considered as usable.

• Quick and easy to learn

• Efficient to use
• Allows rapid recovery from errors
• Easy to remember
• Using is enjoyable
• Aesthetically pleasing

Does your product have the above characteristics?

User and Provider benefits:

Usability increases benefits for both parties: the User and the web site Provider.

Users benefits:

• Users are satisfied, instead of being frustrated when interacting over the web site.

• They achieve their goals effectively and efficiently.
• They cultivate confidence and trust in the product.

In other words, satisfied users, become loyal, going on using the web site, and also recommend to others.

Providers benefits:

• Reduced development time and costs.

• Reduced support costs.
• Reduced user errors.
• Reduced training time and costs.
• Return on Investment.

Usability Can Save Your Company!

John S. Rhodes, Editor and Webmaster at WebWorldPro says: “Data indicate that usability offers a better return on investment than almost any other business action. When times get rough, usability shines. The benefits are huge. Usability is a weapon that can save you money, improve your competitive position, and improve customer loyalty. Now is the time to invest in the research.” -

Full Story: http://webword.com/moving/savecompany.html

After all, making your web site usable, you will make your visitors and your wallet more comfortable and happier!

The second version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is in final working draft and will soon be officially released. Version 1 of the guidelines came under much criticism for being vague, full of jargon and extremely difficult to use. The W3C has been working on version 2.0 of the guidelines for over 5 years now, but has it been worth the wait?

What’s good about WCAG 2.0?

There have certainly been a number of improvements made to the new guidelines. This is of course to be expected - after 5 years you would expect some improvement! Some of these improvements include:

Outdated guidelines removed

A number of guidelines from WCAG 1.0 are well out-of-date. Unfortunately, web developers still implement these out-dated guidelines because they don’t know otherwise. Rather than go on an accessibility training course and learn ‘real-world’ accessibility, many web developers and manager tick boxes against guidelines.

Some of the out-of-date WCAG 1.0 guidelines, which have been removed from WCAG 2.0 include:

• 1.5 - Provide equivalent text links for links within client-side image maps
• 5.6 - Provide abbreviations for table header labels, if you use these
• 9.5 - Use accesskeys (keyboard shortcuts) for important links
• 10.3 - Don’t use tables with more than one column for layout
• 10.4 - Make sure form fields aren’t empty by default
• 10.5 - Ensure different links have non-link text between them

(Please note, the above isn’t the exact wording of the guidelines - each of the original guidelines has been translated from the official W3C guideline into more easy-to-understand language.)

The above guidelines have all been removed from WCAG 2.0, so shouldn’t be adhered to.

Good real world techniques provided

The document, Techniques for WCAG 2.0 replaces the previous techniques document, and is actually much better. It provides a list of common failures, which the previous version didn’t, and actually offers some excellent examples of common errors.

The other major improvement in this techniques document is that the examples provided are far more real-world. The WCAG 1.0 techniques document used text such as PortMaster 3 with ComOS 3.7.1 in their examples, but who has any idea what this means? The new document is far better in this respect, using examples such as phone numbers and calendars, for example.

The techniques document also provides some clever recommendations, which accessibility guideline box-ticking developers wouldn’t perhaps have thought have. For example:

• How to open a link in a new window using unobtrusive JavaScript
• Displaying decorative images through CSS
• Combining text and its adjacent image in the same link
• Providing a heading at the beginning of each section on the page

…And many more! Do have a good look at the WCAG 2.0 techniques document as there’s lots of useful guidance here using quite easy-to-understand examples.

New guidelines included

A number of new guidelines have been brought into WCAG 2.0. Some of these guidelines are totally new whereas others were hinted at, but not specifically stated, in WCAG 1.0. Some examples include:

• Providing text-based error messages for forms
• Ensure all pages have a descriptive title
• Background noise can be turned off

For a full list of brand new guidelines that don’t map to any version 1 guidelines, have a look at the W3C’s Comparison of WCAG 1.0 checkpoints to WCAG 2.0.

What’s not good about WCAG 2.0?

So there certainly have been some improvements made to the W3C accessibility guidelines. But is it all good news? Have the problems associated with WCAG 1.0 been eliminated for this version 2 of the guidelines? Well not quite, as there are still a number of problems…

Verbose and jargon-filled language

One of the main criticisms aimed at WCAG 1.0 was the complexity of the language used. Have things improved? Hardly! Pretty much every paragraph is littered with jargon that the average web developer or web manager would be left with no clue as to the meaning.

Clearly aware of the level of jargon, the W3C have made complex terms green underlined links, linking to definitions. This is all well and good in theory, but when most sentences are broken up with one or two links it makes reading these sentences quite difficult.

Even worse though, is that the definitions are just as jargon-filled and difficult to understand as the term being defined! For example:

• Authored unit - Set of material created as a single body by an author
• Programmatically determined - Determined by software from data provided in a user-agent-supported manner such that the user agents can extract and present this information to users in different modalities
• Specific sensory experience - A sensory experience that is not purely decorative and does not primarily convey important information or perform a function
• Web unit - A collection of information, consisting of one or more resources, intended to be rendered together, and identified by a single Uniform Resource Identifier (such as URLs)

Ironically, there’s even a definition provided for the word ‘jargon’!

Furthermore, it seems that some jargon used in WCAG 1.0, which webmasters have gotten used to, has been replaced with equally incomprehensible words. For example, we no longer have Priority 1, 2 and 3 to aim for - instead we now have success criteria level 1, 2 and 3.

Awful usability

Another major criticism of the WCAG 1.0 guidelines was how difficult it is to find specific guidance and answers. It doesn’t take too long to discover that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines quite clearly offer the same low level of usability.

Reasons for this poor usability include:

• The level of jargon and complexity of language is truly phenomenal (as outlined above)
• The text is littered with links making it very difficult to read
• The two main documents, Understanding WCAG 2.0 and Techniques for WCAG 2.0 are 164 and 363 pages long in total (when doing a print preview)

If only the W3C carried out basic usability testing of how people actually use (or are unable to use) these guidelines! What they’d undoubtedly find is that users won’t understand most guidelines and will end up blindly clicking links to find out how to meet these guidelines.

As with WCAG 1.0, clicking on most links from the WCAG 2.0 guidelines simply takes users into the middle of massive pages full of difficult-to-understand text. The text, of course, is densely littered with links. Users will probably click on a link again in the desperate hope that they’ll somehow find some text that clearly and succinctly explains what they need to do. They’ll usually be disappointed.

Organising the massive amount of content available is certainly not an easy task - but why not, as a start, split up these massive documents into more manageable and less intimidating sets of smaller documents? Then, carry out some usability testing, refine, and test again.

Useful guidelines gone

Although there are a number of useful, new guidelines in WCAG 2.0, a number of important guidelines from WCAG 1.0 have been removed or are only vaguely referred to. These include, but aren’t limited to:

• 3.1 - Avoid embedding text within images.
• 3.2 - Create documents that validate.
• 3.3 - Use CSS and not tables for layout.
• 3.4 - Ensure text is resizable.
• 12.3 - Divide large blocks of information into more manageable groups where natural and appropriate.
• 13.8 - Place distinguishing information at the beginning of headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.
• 14.1 - Use clear and simple language.

(Please note, the above isn’t the exact wording of the guidelines - each of the original guidelines has been translated from the official W3C guideline into more easy-to-understand language.)

Particularly worrying is the removal of the final three guidelines, all of which relate to the accessibility of content. A major part of any website’s accessibility, and one that’s often overlooked, is the site’s usability and how the content is written and structured.

Accessible content is crucial for all special needs users, particularly those with learning difficulties and dyslexia. Perhaps the reason these guidelines have been removed is because content guidelines are fluffier and harder to measure than technical accessibility guidelines. Whatever the reason, this is not a good step for accessibility.

Technology neutral and the concept of the baseline

WCAG 1.0 states quite clearly that alternatives to JavaScript, PDFs and Flash must all be provided, as assistive technologies such as screen readers can’t access these. Although this was generally true in 1999, it’s not the case now, and nowadays JavaScript, PDFs and Flash can all be made accessible to most assistive technologies. (Remember, ‘can be’ is not the same as ‘are’.)

Version 1 of the accessibility guidelines became quite outdated rather quickly. To prevent this from happening to version 2 of the accessibility guidelines, the W3C have attempted to make WCAG 2.0 technology-neutral. Sounds sensible as now the guidelines won’t become outdated so quickly, right?

In practice, what this means is that the WCAG 2.0 guidelines are extremely vague. So vague, in fact, that they’re almost unusable as they talk in such generic terms.

Additionally, the concept of the baseline has now been introduced, where by webmasters can claim which technologies they assume are supported by site visitors’ browsers. So, if you build a website entirely in Flash and say that Flash is part of your baseline, your website can conform with all the guidelines despite the fact that some people won’t be able to access your site at all!

Discussion

So, was the wait worth it? We’ve waited over 5 years for WCAG 2.0 and certainly a number of improvements have been made. Worryingly though, the guidelines continue to be very difficult to actually use, further discouraging webmasters from reading them. The extra vagueness of these new guidelines certainly doesn’t help either.

The W3C just doesn’t seem to get it: People don’t generally want to read through hundreds of pages of text to find out how to implement accessible solutions - they just want answers and specific guidance. For most people, accessibility is just one small part of their job and they don’t have time for all this.

Webmasters are also now being asked to choose a baseline for their website but how do they even begin to go about doing this!? How would you as a web developer explain the concept of a baseline to senior management? How do you decide what you should do so as to comply with any legal requirements? Unfortunately there’s no correct answer to either of these questions.

Solution?

A solution could be that the W3C simply provides specific guidelines for what web developers and managers actually have to do. Much of this information is already there on their website, but it’s hidden away in the enormous and intimidating Techniques for WCAG 2.0 document. This document could be broken down into manageable chunks, added to and refined, and focus on providing specific, real world guidelines.

Guidelines should be relevant and specific to today’s technology, but would be updated on an on-going basis so as to make sure they don’t become too dated. Why did we have to wait over five years for version 2.0? Why couldn’t we have received versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so on during this time? This would surely have prevented WCAG 1.0 becoming out-dated as quickly as it did?

Most importantly though, the whole WCAG 2.0 section on the W3C website needs to have usability testing carried out on it. The benefits of usability testing are pretty well known by now, and it’s quite clear that the W3C has very little idea how real users are interacting with the website. By carrying out ongoing usability testing, the W3C can learn about its users and ultimately aim for an easy-to-understand and intuitive website.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. Trenton’s crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone. He’s extremely good at accessibility consulting and spends much of his time doing DOM scripting & accessible JavaScript.

Usability testing with children is similar in many respects to usability testing with adults. In order to get the most out of the sessions, and ensure the child is comfortable and happy, there are a few differences that you need to be aware of.

Stress of new people and surroundings

Children are far more likely than adults to find encountering new places and people stressful. You should always remember this, so try to find as many ways as possible to relax the child. Some things you could do are:

• Allow a significant period of time - at least 10 minutes - to meet the child. This is critical in putting them at ease before beginning the session. Some easy things to talk about might be computer games, cartoons, sports or school. Trying to make all the equipment used during the session match that which the child uses at home/school (phone up their parents/teachers beforehand to check).
• Try to be as comforting and reassuring as possible. It’s especially important to make it clear to the child that you want their views on the site and that you’re not testing them.
• Plan for the fact that younger children may prefer their parents to remain in the testing room with them. Make sure that parents know that they should stay out of the child’s line-of-sight and not help or distract them.

Asking for help

Children are far more used to asking for - and receiving - help than adults, so it’s very important for the moderator to:

• Clearly explain at the beginning of the test that you want the child to use the site on their own
• Make a sustained effort to deflect any such questioning during the session itself

Good ways of deflecting questions can include:

• Answering a question with a question (e.g. What do you think [you should do now]?)
• Re-stating that you want the child to use the site ‘on their own’
• Asking the child to have ‘one last go’ before you move on to something else

Children get tired, bored and discouraged more easily

Children (especially of younger ages) are less inclined - and/or able - to apply themselves to a single task for a prolonged period. Some ways to work around this are:

• Limiting sessions to 1 hour or less.
• Taking short breaks during sessions if the child becomes tired or irritable.
• Ensuring that sessions cover the intended tasks/scenarios in a different order - this will make sure that the same scenarios are not always tested by tired children, who are less likely to succeed/persevere.
• Asking the child for help so as to provide them with motivation (e.g. asking ‘Could you please find out for me how to…’, or by actually pretending to not be able find/do something on the site).
• Keeping up a steady stream of encouragement and positive feedback (“You’re doing really well and telling us lots of useful things - it will really help make the site better. Keep it up!”).

The importance of non-verbal cues

Children can’t always be relied upon to verbally articulate their thoughts/feelings, either due to their:

• Not being articulate enough
• Being too shy
• Not wanting to say the wrong thing and displease an adult
• Saying things they don’t believe just to please the adult

This makes it particularly important that the usability expert be sensitive to children’s non-verbal cues, such as:

• Sighs
• Smiles
• Frowns
• Yawns
• Fidgeting
• Laughing
• Swaying
• Body angle and posture

Physical differences

A couple of very obvious - but easily forgotten - differences which need to be taken into account are:

• Chair and table settings - Make sure you have a chair/table setting that allows the child to comfortably use the equipment during the session.
• Microphone positioning - Children tend to have quieter voices than adults, so microphones should be placed slightly nearer to the participant than normal.

Levels of literacy and understanding

It is critical to ensure that a session’s participant has an accurate understanding of the scenario being presented to them. Some ways to do this include:

• Asking participants to re-phrase scenarios/goals in their own words.
• Asking participants to repeat a scenario (i.e. what they are trying to achieve) if the task has gone on for some time and you suspect they may have forgotten it.

This article was written by Tim Fidgeon, Head of Usability at Webcredible. He’s crazy about usability and runs Webcredible’s writing for the web training and is passionate about user centered design.

In professional web design circles, the usability testing session has become an essential component of any major project. Similar to focus groups in brand development and product launches, usability testing offers a rare opportunity to receive feedback from the very people the website is aimed at - before it’s too late to do anything about it.But how can you get the most from these usability testing sessions?

1. Choosing your subjects

As with any market research project, the results will only be as good as the people you test. Do not test people from your own company, or friends and family. Go to a market research firm or temp agency and ask them to source participants to a certain profile. Make sure the market research firm does not provide the name of the company or any other details that will cloud the judgement of the participants.

2. Before the usability testing

As with everything in life, first impressions are vital. Each participant must be put at ease. Remember, the usability testing session is often an extremely artificial environment and, for the most beneficial and informative results, we want them to behave as if they were using the site at home or work. Provide clear instructions on how to get to the usability testing location, and if necessary meet the participants at local stations. Do not use terms such as ?usability testing? or ?market research?, as these can

confuse and put people on edge. Also, ensure that participants know how long the usability testing will take, and the type of tasks they will be expected to perform. After the initial greeting and welcoming drinks, there are always legal forms that must be signed. It is essential that these are written in plain English, and are as short as possible. The last thing any nervous usability testing subject wants is to be given a contract that looks like they’re signing their soul away. All you want is for them to be reassured that the tests are completely confidential, and for permission to use the data generated during the test as part of our results. So tell them that.

3. Beginning the usability testing

Before diving into key tasks, get the user familiar with the environment. Tell them the website’s name and URL, and ask them for initial feedback on what they would expect from the site or what they would like the site to be. Make note of any terms or phrases they use - this not only demonstrates you are taking their feedback seriously, but may provide useful tips as to possible labels for key functionality or navigation. Next, let them look at the website they are testing. Gauge their first impressions before allowing them to familiarise themselves with the site. These few simple tasks will help convince the participant that the usability testing will not be difficult and, perhaps most importantly, that they’re not the ones being tested.

4. Choosing tasks

Set tasks that are essential to the new site’s success, such as:

• Buying products
• Paying bills
• Contacting the client

Remember, you’re not looking for an ego massage. The site was built for a reason - can your target audience do what you need them to do? It’s also a good idea to ask the user to suggest tasks. While this gives another indication of their expectations and requirements, it may suggest new functionality or priorities.

5. How to word tasks

People tend to perform more naturally if you provide them with scenarios rather than instructions. When giving them tasks, you should use phrases like ?Scenario A has occurred, and you need to ring the company urgently - find the telephone number?. This is far better than ?find the contact us section of the site?.

6. Presenting tasks

Only give participants one task at a time. More than this may intimidate them, or alter their approach to the test. If the user is required to use inputs from outside the test (e.g. an email giving them a password to the site), give them these inputs in the form they will be presented. This will provide useful feedback on all elements of the process, rather than simply the site.

7. How to behave during the usability testing

It’s essential that you remember that it’s the website that is being tested, not you or the subject. Any feedback you get is valuable - make sure the participant knows this. If they can’t do something, make sure they know it’s

not their fault.

You must stay quiet and out of sight during the test. You must not alter the test results by providing clues, suggesting directions or by reacting to things they say or do. All feedback you give must be neutral. Do not start shaking your head or huffing, however tempting it might be!The only time you should speak is to help the participant give an opinion, or to clarify a response. If in doubt, shut up!

Given the investment made in the project, clients often find it difficult to be quiet during tests. If your client wants to be present, put them in another room with an audio/video link.

8. After the usability testing

After all the tasks have been completed, you should gather as much information as possible. Asking for overall impressions of the site will allow you to judge whether expectations have been met, and whether the participant’s

view of the client or site has changed during the process.

Always ask for suggestions - this not only demonstrates the value you place on their thoughts, but may provide insights into how the site can better support the user. Finally, ask the participant what they remember about the site structure and functions of the site. Clear recollection will confirm that

the site is structured logically and help identify any labelling issues you may have missed.

This article was written by Tim Fidgeon, Head of Usability at Webcredible. He’s crazy about usability and runs Webcredible’s web usability training and writing for the web training.

You know exactly what your organisation does and what your website offers its users. This information has probably become second nature to you, but first-time visitors to your site won’t know this. As such, make sure you don’t forget to tell them what you do.

As soon as new site visitors arrive at your website the first thing they need to know, before anything else, is what you do. You can talk all you like about how great you are, but unless you spell out what you actually do, they won’t even know what you’re so great at! This oh-so-overlooked yet such basic of information can be communicated to your site visitors in a number of different ways:

Page title

Don’t just use the page title to tell me who you are; tell me what you do too. If your company is called Bloggs Ltd don’t only place the words, ‘Bloggs Ltd’ in the page title as there’s plenty of room for more information. If Bloggs Ltd sells widgets, a good page title might be: ‘Bloggs Ltd - Buy widgets online‘.

Note in this example, ‘Buy widgets online‘ was used to describe what Bloggs Ltd does, and not ‘Widget seller’. When describing what it is you do be sure to speak the language of your users, and don’t talk from your point of view. From your point of view you sell widgets, but from their point of view they want to buy widgets online, so do bear this in mind when authoring the page title.

The page title is the first thing that appears on screen, and especially on dial-up modems can be the only thing that displays for the first 10 seconds or so. For many web users this is the first piece of content they’ll read on your site.

The page title is also very important for search engines, which place more importance on the page title than any other on-page element. Descriptive page titles are also essential for blind web users utilising screen readers, as it’s the first thing that gets read aloud to them upon arriving at the page.

Tagline

A good tagline is one of the most important usability features on any website. A good tagline should be explanatory and not vague, clear and informative and about four to eight words in length. A tagline is different to a company slogan, in that the former describes what the organisation/website does whereas the latter is designed to evoke certain feeling or create a brand.

‘Priceless’ and ‘I’m loving it’ are slogans by Mastercard and McDonald’s respectively - they differ from taglines because they don’t describe what the organisation does.

Taglines are so important because no matter on what page site visitors enter your website, they’ll always be able to quickly gain an understanding of what your organisation and website offers. This can be especially true for site visitors coming into internal pages from search engines - by telling these site visitors what you do through the tagline, they may be more likely to explore your site beyond the initial page on which they enter.

Taglines are also good for search engine optimisation, as they appear on every page right at the top of the page, an area on to which search engines place importance.

Main heading

The main heading on the homepage is one of the first pieces of text web users notice, especially on clean well laid out websites. Sticking a ‘Welcome to our website’ may seem to be friendly and welcoming to you, but to task-driven site visitors it doesn’t help in any way shape or form. A quick summary of what you do and/or what the website offers, in just four or five words can be highly effective (and very search engine friendly too!).

Opening paragraph

Perhaps the most important place on the homepage to tell your site visitors what you do, the opening paragraph must be short, succinct and straight-to-the-point. Just one sentence is enough to put across this most basic yet fundamental of information.

When writing this opening paragraph, remember to front-load the content (this rule actually applies to every paragraph on the website). Front-loading means putting the conclusion first, followed by the when, what, where and how.

Don’t write a story with a start, middle and conclusion - generally speaking on the web, we scan looking for the information that we’re after so put the conclusion first. This way, site visitors can read the conclusion first, which in this case is what your organisation actually does. If they want to know any more, they can then continue reading or jump to another section of the page. (To see front-loading in action, read any newspaper article.)

Exceptions

So, does every website need to tell users what the organisation does in these four different places? Well, not necessarily. We all know what Mastercard and McDonalds do, so it could definitely be argued that websites for household names need not explicitly say what they do. What these sites should do instead is tell us what the website offers, and this message can (and should) be put across in any of the above four ways - how else will site visitors quickly be able to find this out?

Conclusion

People are going to visit your site who don’t know what you do. Before you can even begin selling to them you must tell them what your organisation and website does. In addition to fulfilling site visitors’ immediate need (finding out what you do) you’ll also be boosting your search engine rankings. If your organisation is a household name, then instead of explaining what you do, it may be wise to tell site visitors what they can do on your website.

This article was written by Trenton Moss, founder of Webcredible, a web usability and accessibility consultancy. He’s extremely good at usability testing and running CSS training courses.

Testing a website for accessibility can be a time-consuming and laborious process. The free Web Accessibility Toolbar can do most of the hard work for you though and is an indispensable tool for anyone interested in accessibility.

The toolbar is not an automated testing tool so does require manual work from you. It’s therefore able to avoid the many problems with automated accessibility testing tools. It doesn’t require any technical knowledge so even the biggest technophobe can check their website for accessibility!

Installing the Web Accessibility Toolbar

You can download the toolbar for free from http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar, and after you install it, it will sit in the toolbar area of Internet Explorer. The total file size is just 550kb so the download won’t take too long. The toolbar only works on Internet Explorer on Windows, so if Internet Explorer isn’t your first-choice browser you’ll have to switch browsers when using it. (Alternatively, you can download the Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox which offers similar, but not identical, functionality.)

Using the Web Accessibility Toolbar

Now you’ve downloaded and installed the Web Accessibility Toolbar you can start using it! There are 12 buttons in total on the toolbar, each with a down arrow to the right of the text. If you click on the down arrow for any of these buttons then a dropdown menu appears with all the available options (alternatively you can use the keyboard shortcut keys assigned to each button).

Checking for document structure

One of the most useful buttons is the seventh, Structure. It’s essential that the structure within the HTML code accurately reflects the visual structure of the page. This is so that visually impaired web users using screen readers can gain an understanding of the page structure.Some of the most useful items in the Structure dropdown menu include:

• Headings - Shows which items on the page are labelled as headings within the HTML code. The main page heading should be an <h1> (heading level one) and other headings should be <h2>s (heading level twos). Any sub-heading of an <h2> should be an <h3>, then <h4> and so on. Heading numbers should always be sequential - an <h4> shouldn’t follow an <h2> if there’s no <h3>. Headings are especially useful for screen reader users as they can call up a list of headings and jump straight to the section in which they’re most interested.
• List items - Shows which items on the page are labelled as lists within the HTML code, by displaying
• next to any list item. Lists can be horizontal or vertical, and all navigation should be marked up as a list item. Lists are very useful for screen reader users as the screen reader will announce the number of items in the list before reading the list items.
  
• Fieldset / Label - Shows which items on the page are called labels within the title=”Hypertext Markup Language”>HTML code. After selecting Fieldset / Label, the text next to each form should say the word label next to it - if not, that text hasn’t been called a label in the code.
• Table border - Places a border around each table. Nested tables within tables can cause huge difficulties for screen reader users. After selecting this item, the first table will have a black border the second blue, then green, yellow, orange, red and purple. If you see any of these last four colours it’s time to take a good look at the code behind the page.
  
• Table cell order - Shows the order in which the page is read out to screen reader users (if a table is used for layout). Hopefully, the order should be reasonably logical.

Checking the site works under all circumstances

It’s important that your website doesn’t depend on any one type of technology, or users whose browsers don’t support that technology may be unable to access your site. You can check to see if your site depends on any one technology:

• Images > Toggle Image/Alt - One of the most useful functions on the toolbar, replaces images with their ALT, or alternative, text. Alt text is read out to screen reader users or displayed to web users with images turned off, instead of the image itself (e.g. users on dial-up modems may turn off images to speed up the download time of pages). It’s essential that the ALT text provides an adequate description of the image.
• IE Options > Toggle JavaScript - Turns off JavaScript. After selecting this option, work through the pages on your website - is the whole site still accessible to you?
  
• IE Options > Toggle ActiveX - Turns off ActiveX controls. Again, after selecting this, work through your website to see if the whole site is still accessible to you.
  
• IE Options > Toggle CSS - Turns off CSS. Are pages still legible? If CSS is used for layout then you will see the page content in the order that it’s read out to screen reader users. (If you toggle image/alt after this, you’ll have a complete visual representation of what screen reader users will hear.)

Other useful accessibility checks

There’s a huge amount of functionality available on the Web Accessibility Toolbar, but some of the other most important accessibility checks you can carry out with the toolbar include:

• Validate > W3C HTML validator > Validate HTML - Checks whether the page is based on valid HTML or not. If the page is not valid, you’ll be told why.
  
• CSS > Deprecated HTML > Deprecated elements & attributes - Checks for code that shouldn’t be used and is being phased out. A new window will open containing the HTML code - anything in red is deprecated and should be removed.
  
• Doc info > Page speed report - Examines all the files used to display the web page and prepares a report on the average download speed for that page for different Internet connections.
  
• Doc info > List links - Displays a list of all on-page links. Screen reader users can call up a list of links and jump straight to the page in which they’re most interested, so it’s essential that link text makes sense out of context. Link text such as ?click here? should be avoided at all costs!
  
• Colour > Greyscale - Shows the page in greyscale. Great for checking colour contrast.

Other functionality

The Web Accessibility Toolbar offers some other interesting functionality:

• Resize - See how your website looks for users on 640 x 480px, 800 x 600px and 1024 x 768px screen resolutions.
  
• Tools > Simulations - Put yourself in the shoes of a special needs users with these fascinating simulations.

Conclusion

The Web Accessibility Toolbar offers an enormous amount of functionality. Download it for free from href=”http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar/”>http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar and start using it. Without any technical expertise, you can perform a mini-accessibility audit on any site in just a couple of minutes.

This article was written by Trenton Moss, founder of Webcredible, a web usability and accessibility consultancy. He’s extremely good at usability training and writing for the web training.

Why is download speed so important?

Do you like to wait for pages to download? Neither do your site users. Read on…

1. Lay out your pages with CSS, not tables

CSS downloads faster than tables because:

• Browsers read through tables twice before displaying their contents, once to work out their structure and once to determine their content
• Tables appear on the screen all in one go - no part of the table will appear until the entire table is downloaded and rendered
• Tables encourage the use of spacer images to aid with positioning
• CSS generally requires less code than cumbersome tables
• All code to do with the layout can be placed in an external CSS document, which will be called up just once and then cached (stored) on the user’s computer; table layout, stored in each HTML document, must be loaded up each time a new page downloads
• With CSS you can control the order items download on to the screen - make the content appear before slow-loading images and your site users will definitely appreciate it

2. Don’t use images to display text

It’s our old friend CSS to the rescue again. There’s no need to use images to display text as so much can be accomplished through CSS. For example:

check out the example here

Put your mouse over the above link, created entirely through CSS. This is just a very simple example - the tabs at the top of this page are made with CSS too. Have a look at how else you can use CSS to make navigation buttons.

To learn more about CSS and the amazing things it can do for your website, please visit our CSS resources area.

3. Call up decorative images through CSS

It’s possible to present images as part of the background, called up through CSS. If you’ve got an image that’s 200px by 100px you can use the following HTML code:

<div class=”pretty-image”></div>

And this CSS:

.pretty-image { background: url(filename.gif); width: 200px; height: 100px }

This may at first seem a little pointless but this technique could really increase the download time of your pages. Browsers basically download background images after everything else. By using this technique, your text will load instantaneously and your site users can freely roam about the page while your 50kb fancy image downloads.

This technique disables the ALT attribute though so if you really want to have one then replace the above HTML code with this:

<image src=”spacer.gif” class=”pretty-image” alt=”description” />

Spacer.gif is a 1px x 1px transparent image. Now you have a 50 byte transparent image and the main content loading first, and your great big decorative image, complete with ALT text, loading second. Perfect.

Please note that this technique is only good for decorative images and not informational ones. Any user who has CSS disabled will not be able to see your CSS-embedded images (or their alternative text).

4. Use contextual selectors

This is inefficient:

<p class=”text”>This is a sentence</p>

<p class=”text”>This is another sentence</p>

<p class=”text”>This is yet another sentence</p>

<p class=”text”>This is one more sentence</p>.text { color: #03c; font-size: 2em }
Instead of assigning a value to each individual paragraph, we can nest them within a <div> tag and assign a value to this tag:

<div class=”text”>

<p>This is a sentence</p>

<p>This is another sentence</p>

<p>This is yet another sentence</p>

<p>This is one more sentence</p>

</div>.text p { color: #03c; font-size:2em }
This second CSS example basically says that every paragraph within class=”text” should be assigned a colour value of #03c and a font size of 2em.

At first glance this doesn’t look too important, but if you can apply this properly throughout your document you can easily knock off 20% of the file size.

You may have noticed the colour values are shorter than normal. #03c is a shortened version of #0033cc - you can assign this abbreviated value to any colour value like this.

5. Use shorthand CSS properties

Font

Use:

font: 1em/1.5em bold italic serif

…instead of

font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.5em; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; font-family: serif

Border

Use:

border: 1px black solid

…instead of

border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid

Background

Use:

background: #fff url(image.gif) no-repeat top left

…instead of

background-color: #fff; background-image: url(image.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: top left;

Margin, padding, border

Use:

margin: 2px 1px 3px 4px (top, right, bottom, left)
…instead of

margin-top: 2px; margin-right: 1px; margin-bottom: 3px; margin-right: 4px

Use:

margin: 5em 1em 3em (top, left and right, bottom)
…instead of

margin-top: 5em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-right: 4em

Use:

margin: 5% 1% (top and bottom, left and right)
…instead of

margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; margin-right: 1%; margin-right: 1%

These rules can be applied to margin, border and padding.

6. Minimise white space, line returns and comment tags

Every single letter or space in your HTML code takes up one byte. It doesn’t sound like much but it all adds up. We’ve found that by working through your page source and eliminating unnecessary white space and comments, you can shave off up to, or even over (if your HTML is really inefficient) 10% of its file size.

7. Use relative call-ups

Try to avoid absolute call ups as they take up more space. An example of an absolute call up is: <a href=”http://www.URL.com/filename.htm”>. Much better would be <a href=”filename.htm”>. But what if some files are in different folders to other ones? Use these shorthand properties:

• <a href=”/”> - Calls up http://www.URL.com
• <a href=”/filename.html”> - Calls up http://www.URL.com/filename.html
• <a href=”/directory/filename.html”> - Calls up http://www.URL.com/directory/filename.html
• <a href=”./”> - Calls up index.html within that directory
• <a href=”../”> - Calls up index.html one directory above
• <a href=”../filename.html”> - Calls up filename.html one directory above
• <a href=”../../”> - Calls up index.html two directories above

8. Remove unnecessary META tags and META content

Most META tags are pretty much unnecessary and don’t achieve very much. If you’re interested, you can see a list of META tags that are available. The most important tags for search engine optimisation are the keywords and description tags, although due to mass abuse they’ve lost a lot of importance in recent times. When using these META tags try to keep the content for each under 200 characters - anything more increases the size of your pages. Lengthy META tags are not good for search engines anyway because they dilute your keywords.

9. Put CSS and JavaScript into external documents

To place CSS in an external document use:

<link type=”text/css” rel=”stylesheet” href=”filename.css” />

To place JavaScript in an external document use:

<script language=”JavaScript” src=”filename.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

Any external file is called up just once and then cached (stored) on the user’s computer. Instead of repeating JavaScript or CSS over and over again in HTML files, just write it out once in an external document.

And don’t forget, there’s no limit to the number of these external documents that you can use! For example, instead of making one huge CSS document, have one main one and some others that are specific to certain areas of your site.

10. Use / at the end of directory links

Don’t do this: <a href=”http://www.URL.com/directoryname”>
Do this instead: <a href=”http://www.URL.com/directoryname/“>

Why? If there’s no slash at the end of the URL the server doesn’t know if the link is pointing to a file or to a directory. By including the slash the server instantly knows that the URL is pointing to a directory and doesn’t need to spend any time trying to work it out.

This article was written by Trenton Moss. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone.