Over the years AccEase has assessed and surveyed hundreds of New Zealand Government web sites. We have found some common problems which create difficulties for users. Here are the top eight.
- Text alternatives for images are missing or useless. Alt text is not a caption, but rather conveys the same meaning as the image. If the image is purely decorative then use a null or empty “” alt so it will be invisible to a screen reader. Screen reader users must really get sick of hearing “image image image” ad nauseam. Good alt text can be useful for sighted users too.
- Essential public accountability and other important public documents on the site are in pdf only. These are a real problem, and not just for blind people. They are large files, and often don’t re-size well. Pdfs are designed to be printed and often do not work at all well on the screen. I could go on.
- Poor colour contrast means essential information might be unreadable for some users. This is often a problem with essential navigation.
- Poor enlargement means a very tiring experience for many people, including those in poor light or who left their specs at home.
- Failure to use access keys. Consistent use of access keys is important not only for blind users but for people who navigate the web without a mouse.
- Small navigation points. These can easily be missed by the user and are really annoying for people with poor hand-eye co-ordination.
- Accessibility statements focused on compliance rather than an understanding of an audience. That is quite insulting to the user. In other words, we don’t really care about how bad your experience is on our site, or if you can find what you are looking for. We just want to tick some boxes to get the SSC off our backs.
- Overly busy home pages. Now where on earth in all this clutter can I find?
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Nice post Robyn. You are really restrained about pdfs-they must surely rank as one of the most annoying impediments to the general progress of humanity, and up there with the blokes who insist on sending their young blokes off to war with other young blokes, via a scenic excursion or two to create mayhem for some nearby civilians, or that fiendish soul who invented childproof lids.
I have heard EVERY rationalisation of pdf-only documents, and I find them all highly inadequate. If someone is utterly convinced of the value of pdfs
I say they must provide alternatives. You could always pepper them with demands for alternatives that are non-pdf. Mutter about the NZ Disability strategy, or th UN Disability Convention. Don’t let them fob you off with a website either- you can often spend ages trying to find the information, or what is on the website is a pared-down version of what’s in the pdf. If we’re really lucky, they will become less used, like those little electronic games thinggeys kids used to play in the eighties.
Thanks for posting this. I am looking forward to exploring the AccEase site you mentioned. I am a student and I do small Web projects on the side. I want to learn more about accessibility for users who have low vision or blindness.
I strive for simple, meaningful markup, but I want to know more about things like access keys.
I would appreciate any further resources you could offer.