Website Usability & Accessibility
The Web is evolving at an incredible rate, becoming ever more capable and increasingly complex. No longer the realm of specialist 'techies', the Web is now a full-blown, mainstream media. Connection speeds are getting faster, and everyday, billions of 'ordinary' people just take it for granted.
It is this combination of events that has led to 'professional' web designers requiring a complete understanding of 'usability' and 'accessibility'. Websites, regardless of their complexity, need to be easy to use for even the most technophobic and non-savvy of visitors. Simple logic attests; if a site is neither usable nor easily accessed, it's likely to be only rarely used or accessed?
Usability
As the name suggests 'usability' is the study of how easy or not, something is to use. Most of the time we take usability for granted - when things work well, we don't notice it. It is only when things don't work in the way we expect - when they frustrate and annoy us - that we notice it ... and don't we notice it!
Websites are no different; they also need to work in the way people expect. But as websites become bigger and have the capacity to do more, this becomes more difficult to achieve. However, with good planning and careful structuring, a complex, sophisticated website needn't be difficult to use.
Frieze Design has been working with Web user 'interactions' and design 'interfaces' for close to a decade. We know what works and what doesn't. We've seen how habits, patterns and conventions have evolved, and how these can vary with different user groups. Surprisingly perhaps, we actually find 'usability' interesting. After all, understanding how people use the Web makes our job easier, and ultimately leads us to create websites people enjoy using.
Accessibility
Again, as the name suggests 'accessibility' is about making your website as accessible to as many people as possible. But this is of particular importance to those with disability that use computer based assisted technologies.
Screen reader software for example, allows the visually impaired to have a website read-out to them. Other assistive technologies include making it easy for people to navigate a website using only their keyboard.
In order for these technologies to work correctly though, a website needs to be developed in such a way as to include functional routines that only assisted technologies uniquely require.
It's important to have all accessibility considerations integrated into the standard build of a website, from the beginning. There seems to be a trend to 'add-on' accessibility features like 'larger text' (A A A) and 'high contrast' versions of a site. This shouldn't be necessary on a new website, it should be built-in. An analogy would be to build a new building with a 'special' disability entrance around the back. A new building should be, by default, accessible to everyone by the same means.
We have developed websites that adhere to the highest level of accessibility - as this site you're looking at right now does. So if you need help with a website that needs to be fully accessible, just drop us a line.
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