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Re: Usability vs. Accessibility

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From: James A.
Date: Mar 22, 2016 12:43PM

I consider usability as a sub-set of accessibility as well as the other way around. It is perfectly possible to have materials that are technically accessible but unusable to all but a highly experienced assistive technology user. For example, when a large number of new shortcut keys have to utilised to access functionality; the limited up-take of ARIA controls by users. Similarly many disabled users are not using assistive technology but cognitive demands of complex interfaces and content can make sites in accessible.

Regards

Abi James
University of Southampton

-----Original Message-----
From: _mallory [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: 22 March 2016 17:53
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Usability vs. Accessibility

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 03:49:06PM -0400, Chagnon | PubCom.com wrote:
> Personally, I think it's impossible to separate accessibility from usability. One without the other is complete failure to communicate.

Personally I agree. I find this related to the two definitions I find of "accessibility" for digital-- there's the one that focuses solely on physical disabilities, and the Tim Berners-Lee hippy-view of "works on as many devices in as many places for as many people as reasonably possible." Some people call this last one a sort of #allLivesMatter so I tend to add to it "But with particular emphasis and thought on those with physical disabilities since the usability and (device/network/etc) access problems hit these folks disproporionally harder."

It's for this reason that I'll personally, mentally put Progressive Enhancement in as an accessibility-related topic, while understanding that most other people in this space will say things like "Javascript running has nothing to do with disabilities." I find this is a bit of an attitude from developers that honestly has the very same roots as the attitude other developers have about disabled users. Building for as many users as possible means just that and it is an excellent start for building "accessibly for those with physical disabilites." Building for more devices instead of only iPhones and latest-and-greatest browsers doesn't just assist the poor or people with less access to newer devices-- it also automatically works better or those held to particular, maybe less-standard devices due to disability or AT software demands as well. One feeds and influences the other.

I'm particularly thinking of this a lot when I need to build any scripted aria-ised widgets. I really cannot allow something to come through to a user with roles set on it in the HTML if something stopped, blocked, or mangled the Javascript necessary to make those roles have any useful meaning. So I prefer to let JS set the roles and states, and let CSS style based on the presence of the roles, so if somehing didn't come through, users aren't left in some half-state of nothing-works.

If I can't use it, it's not accessible to me. If I can use it, it is accessible, but perhaps difficult and frustrating. If I can use it, use it easily and without too much thought, it's both accessible and usable.

So some people take accessibility to be the binary (it can be accessed or not) and usability to describe *how* well it can be used. ...Usability as an extension of describing the accessibility of the site/app/whatever.

Sorry for the ramble.
_mallory