Web Accessibility and Usability Go Hand-In-Hand

Attended presentation entitled "Web Accessibility and Usability Go Hand-In-Hand" by Cordelia Geiken, Tim Offenstein, and Jonathan Hsieh of CITES Usability Design group at the 2009 UIUC Web Accessibility Conference.  About 70 people in attendance.

• What is accessible isn't always usable (gave example of Beckman Cafe's Braille sign unreachable because it's behind a table and 6 feet above the ground)
• Careful about sending mixed messages (gave door example of "Push bar to open" sign about "Alarm will sound if door is opened")
• The pot pie example
  • Walked 10-year-old daughter over the phone on how to cook pot pies.
  • Came home to find pot pies face-down on cookie sheet since that was her only end-user experience (pies were always served that way)
• Types of Usability Testing
  • Card sorting
    • Open card sort: asking users to organize cards into their own groups
    • Closed card sort: categories are provided
  • Paper prototype
  • Computer-based testing
    • Task-based evaluation: asking the user to do a set of things to do on the site
    • Taskless evaluation: providing a scenario but no specific direction
• A basic review of accessibility tasks followed.