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Re: Activating controls with hidden accessible names using speech recognition

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From: Cliff Tyllick
Date: Feb 10, 2016 12:33PM

The classic case of recognizable icons is the so-called Hamburger icon for site navigation. Except that hardly anybody recognizes it as well as they think they do.

Even people who know what it represents tend not to use it without first stopping to think about it. Put one word beneath it—"Menu"—and everybody recognizes what it is and uses it without giving it a second thought when it's the thing they need. At least that's what I am told by usability professionals who test this design element again and again, one client at a time.

People will tell you that they recognize and use the unlabeled icon, but if you observe their behavior you will see that much of the time they don't.

The bottom line is to avoid creating text-free interfaces. Icons rarely are as recognizable and unambiguous as we think.

Put me solidly in the camp of liking the proposed approach. If the design is responsive, it shouldn't lead to that much trouble.

Cliff

Cliff Tyllick
Accessibility Specialist
Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services

Sent from my iPhone
Although its spellcheck often saves me, all goofs in sent messages are its fault.

> On Feb 10, 2016, at 9:52 AM, _mallory < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:
>
> "The icons are more easily recognizable at a glance than text labels"
>
> Actually I remember reading a study (or a reference to a study) showing
> that in an application, what users really remember is *where* the icon
> is, rather than what the icon looks like. Other things like the colour
> and size were also more remembered.
>
> I like the idea of the UA exposing these names to any user who asks.
>
> _mallory
>
>> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 09:15:23AM -0500, Robert Fentress wrote:
>> All good points. However, I can hear the person whose site I'm
>> evaluating saying something like, "We'll, my application is very
>> complex and making these things into icons allows me to fit more
>> functionality into a limited space, thus making it so users do not
>> have to spend a lot of time rooting through separate pages to get to
>> the functionality they need. The icons are more easily recognizable
>> at a glance than text labels would be and thus reduce the cognitive
>> load, once you are familiar with what they mean."
>>
>> I like the idea of having a way of enabling text labels if desired.
>> However, I have a hard time imagining how that could happen without a
>> major interface redesign at this point.
>>
>> Oh well, I guess I just need to make them aware of the issues and
>> provide possible solutions. It's up to them figure out how (or if)
>> they can implement them given their resources.
>>
>> There is also the question of at what point this becomes a user agent
>> responsibility. I mean, the information is there and I'd argue speech
>> control software should provide the option to make it available
>> visually. If every label must be visible to everyone all the time,
>> what is the point of things like aria-label and chained ids for
>> aria-labelledby?
> > > >