HSU: Beyond Alt Text Report

Beyond ALT Text - Summary

This report contains 75 design guidelines for making web sites more usable for people who are visually impaired. These guidelines may produce a more user-friendly web site when used in conjunction with W3C accessibility specifications.

Copyright restrictions

This report is available for the exclusive use of Humboldt State University staff, faculty and students under a campus license purchased by the Office of University Communications. Do not share copies of this report outside of the campus. To do so would violate our license agreement. You may direct questions to the Office of University Communications.

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The report can be easily downloaded from campus workstations. For campus users downloading from home, the HSU Library is providing authentication services to verify authorized users via the ID number on your campus ID card.

'Beyond ALT Text' PDF file (requires Acrobat Reader to view.)
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Long Summary

The report contains:

Results of usability tests of 19 websites with users with several different types of disabilities who are using a range of assistive technology:
- blind users using screen readers
- blind users using Braille readers
- low-vision users using screen magnifiers
- motor-impaired users
Test data collected mainly in the United States, with some additional studies in Japan to ensure the international applicability of the recommendations
- A total of 104 users participated in the usability studies:
- 84 users with disabilities
- 20 non-disabled users who served as a control group
75 detailed design guidelines

The report is richly illustrated with screenshots of designs that worked well or that caused difficulties for users with disabilities in the usability tests. The examples and guidelines are directly based on empirical observation of actual user behavior.

This report addresses the usability of websites and intranets. The report should be used together with the standards for technical accessibility of web pages. Obviously, technical accessibility is a pre-condition for usability: if users cannot get at the content of the web pages, they also cannot use the website. Technical accessibility is necessary, but not sufficient for usability of a design. Even if a site is theoretically accessible because it follows the technical accessibility standards to the letter, it can still be very hard to use for people with disabilities.

The fact that technical accessibility is insufficient to guarantee great usability, ease of learning, and high user performance should come as no surprise. After all, countless usability studies of websites and intranets have documented severe usability problems, low success rates, and sub-optimal user performance, even when testing users with no disabilities. Being able to see everything on a webpage certainly doesn't guarantee that you will know what to do on the page or the optimal way to perform your task. This observation holds equally true for users with disabilities: just because a site is technically accessible doesn't mean that it will be easy or fast to perform tasks on the site.

This report addresses the second level in improving the user experience of websites and intranets for people with disabilities. Yes, you must ensure technical accessibility but you should also ensure good usability, ease of use, and high productivity for employees and customers with disabilities.

Report by Kara Pernice Coyne and Jakob Nielsen

Executive Summary
Overview of This Research
Current State of Affairs
Assistive Technology Users: Observed Behavior
Guidelines
- Do Not Abandon the Good Design Rules You Already Know
- Graphics and Multimedia
- Pop-Up Windows, Rollover Text, New Windows, and Cascading Menus
- Links and Buttons
- Page Organization
- Intervening Pages
- Forms and Fields
- Presenting Text
- Search
- Shopping
- Tables and Frames
- Trust, Strategy, and Company Image
International: United States and Japan
Participants in the Study: General Information
Participants in the Quantitative Study
Participants in the Qualitative Study
Websites Studied
Test Tasks
Assistive Technology, References, and Pricing
About Disabilities and Assistive Technology Usage
Methodology
Accessibility “Audit” Software
A Note about Government Efforts
Resources
About the Authors
Acknowledgements

Sites Tested

Charles Schwab (Large investment company)
Chicago Transit Authority (Public transportation system for the city of Chicago)
Target (Large retail/e-commerce company)
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Museum/non-profit organization)
The Hoover Dam (Tourist attraction)
Real Audio (High-tech company)
Guru.com (Job recruiting/seeking)
Internal Revenue Service (U.S. government)
Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. government)
New York City Department of Sanitation (U.S. local government)
Major League Baseball (Very large company)
Ticketmaster (E-commerce site, real-time)
Abercrombie & Fitch (E-commerce site, clothing; sells internationally)
Japanese prime minister's official page (Japanese government)
Japanese Weather Association, JWA (Japanese government)
Otsuka Corp. (Very large Japanese company: drug manufacturer)
E-phone (Japanese high-tech company: Internet phone service)
Ways shop (Japanese e-commerce site )
Lake Yamanaka (Japanese non-profit organization/tourist attraction)