WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: New WebAIM Site Released

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From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Jun 12, 2006 4:20AM

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006, Patrick Lauke wrote:

> I agree with you that the homepage is a bit dense in information,
> so yes, this may need a bit of tweaking.

"A bit" from a normal user's perspective perhaps, but the amount and
organization of content must be quite confusing to many people with
cognitive and other disabilities. Perhaps not many users of this site have
such disabilities - rather, the site is used by people who try to make
their sites more accessible to people with disabilities. But it still sets
an example, and examples teach more than articles.

> The links which aren't underlined are all grouped in panels which
> (at least to me) look fairly obviously like navigation-type panels.

To you perhaps, but is this really obvious enough to remove the default
rendering of links? After all, as I wrote, the page has excessive
navigation and _differently_ implemented navigational links. If you see
texts that are underlined and texts that aren't underlined, wouldn't you
think that the former are links and the latter aren't? It requires some
reasoning to deduce that this is not the case, and what about people who
cannot (or just won't) follow such a path of logic?

>> It would take quite some time to listen to it in its entirety.
>
> Because, obviously, screen reader users passively sit back and get the
> entire page read to them? I'd say this is the exception, rather than
> the norm.

For a main page of a site about accessibility, I don't think it would
exceptional to read all the content there when you encounter it for the
first time. Later on, when using the main page for navigation mainly and
to check latest news, how fast will this be? There is no simple main menu.

> Oh dear...should be viewable without scrolling?

Yes.

> At what resolution and browser window size?

The one that people use. Of course, "viewable without scrolling" is a
rough rule, as most good design principles are. It's not exact science but
making things comfortable most of the time and not very uncomfortable
ever. When a main page does not fit into a _full screen_ window on a
typical 17" screen with typical settings on a typical browser, and does
not even come close, then it's simply too big.

> Seems like a bit of a sweeping generalisation to me.

No, it's a good design principle. Early studied in web usability
indicated, according to Jakob Nielsen, that
"only 10% of Web users would scroll a navigation page to see any links
that were not visible in the initial display. The vast majority of users
would make their selection from those links they could see without
scrolling." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9712a.html
As the page tells, Nielsen relatively soon relativized the issue,
but he still makes a point:

"There are still a few users who rarely scroll. Even those users who are
willing to scroll may be tempted to choose one of the initially visible
options when it seems to match their goals. Such users will never see an
even better, but invisible, choice that would have required scrolling.
Therefore, I still recommend trying to design navigation pages to make all
major choices visible without scrolling on the monitors used by the
average visitor to a site."

User behavior has changed, but not drastically. People scroll because they
have learned they have to. It is still not good design practice. Main
pages have become more and more crowded, because everything and everyone
wants its part of the sunlight on the Main Page. Yet it is simply poor
design if the main page is overfull. Essential content should fit into
the window without scrolling at least in typical full-screen viewing, and
non-essential content simply should not appear on the main page but behind links.

In information-rich sites, like webaim.org and w3.org, it might seem
proper to have lots of navigation on the main page. After all, the sites
are mostly used by experts or to-be experts who can find their way in a
maze of twisty little menus. Yet, the sites set a bad example that will be
imitated, consciously or unconsciously.

>> The red backgrounds of headings hurt my eyes
>
> But that would fall under "personal (aesthetic) preference", no?

My eyes know nothing about esthetics when they hurt. It's of course not as
bad as it could be (many site use pure red in large quantities), but it's
still unnecessary and distracting.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/