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Re: Personalized user experiences

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From: Mallory
Date: May 16, 2020 4:17AM

I agree with Steve re WCAG, but I've seen time and time again instances where users start comparing web pages and end up complaining about filter bubbles or geo-idiocy or whatever.

Do what you're doing but have a one-sentence statement near the top of the content stating the results are based on previous actions and offer a link to the "default" homepage. This lets you continue to offer what your company feels is a user-oriented service while not doing the hotel-lobby-in-a-foreign-country thing (I hate being in a country where I don't speak the language and either using a computer in that country, or websites doing geo-ip-crap give me a sub-par experience).

Remember the instances of shared computers ie inter-family, public library/school, etc. where the cookies aren't tied to users at all.

cheers,
_mallory

On Fri, May 15, 2020, at 2:45 AM, Steve Green wrote:
> 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>
>
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