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Re: Personalized user experiences

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From: Christine Hogenkamp
Date: May 15, 2020 12:35PM

I would argue that changing the site/page layout without notifying the user
does constitute a fail of:
3.2.3 Consistent Navigation: Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on
multiple Web pages within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative
order each time they are repeated, unless a change is initiated by the
user. (Level AA)
Particularly: "unless a change is initiated by the user"
If you don't tell the user the homepage has been changed on purpose and
why, they may think the page loaded incorrectly or they aren't on the same
site anymore, that sort of thing.

Is there a way you could get the site to create a new element when this
change occurs, to inform the user something like "Based on your career
selection, the homepage has been updated with content related to your
career interests" or similar? As a pop-up that appears when the homepage
reloads with their updated content, possibly.

*===*
*Christine Hogenkamp*
Front-end Developer

CONTEXT CREATIVE
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>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Steve Green < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Fri, 15 May 2020 00:45:03 +0000
> Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Personalized user experiences
> I don't see anything that would constitute a WCAG non-conformance. The
> only success criteria that are even remotely relevant are 3.2.3 (Consistent
> Navigation) and 3.2.4 (Consistent Identification), but you don't appear to
> be violating those.
>
> Steve Green
> Managing Director
> Test Partners Ltd
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > On Behalf Of
> Myron To
> Sent: 14 May 2020 23:30
> To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
> Subject: [WebAIM] Personalized user experiences
>
> I've been trying to research if there is any guideline that would tell me
> whether or not the following is a failure or not.
>
> My company has designed and built a career website that customizes its
> homepage based on the user's job search behavior on the site. That is, if
> we find that a job seeker on our site has searched for and viewed a nursing
> category job, we assume that person is interested in a nursing career and
> cookie that user's browser so that if the user clicks on the home link in
> the main navigation, the user is presented with an alternate homepage that
> contains nursing career information, instead of generic career information,
> which is presented on our default/non-personalized homepage. However, in
> reality, the cookie tells the browser to redirect to an alternate homepage
> (different URL). The personalized nursing homepage template is very similar
> to the default homepage, but the contents, such as text and images, now
> present nursing-oriented text and graphics.
>
> I imagine this could be disorienting for some because if there was
> something specific on the default homepage that the user wanted to see
> again, the user wouldn't be able to find it because it's not on this
> redirected page URL. And the user is likely not to notice that the URL
> changed or that the user had been redirected to an alternate homepage.
>
> Does this scenario present a WCAG failure? If so, which guideline can I
> reference as an argument to my team?
>
> If the URL did not change or redirect to another page, and we simply used
> a show/hide condition to swap out images and text, would that pass? I think
> of how Amazon customizes their homepage experience based on my past
> shopping behavior in order to entice me to buy other similar items, but
> their URL doesn't change. Would this type of scenario be acceptable or is
> it still disorienting and considered a failure?
>
> Thank you for your input!
>
> *Myron To*
> Director, Program Management
> m: +1.360.702.9411
> <EMAIL REMOVED>
>
>
>