Usability and Accessibility Evaluation
How easy do you make it for visitors to use your Website, find what they want,
and do what you want them to do?
That is the essence of usability.
Doing so while adhering to current development standards and ensuring that your site works for everyone, is the essence of accessibility.
Good Website design is usable and accessible to all.
In addition to making it easier and more likely that users will do what you want them to do, usability and accessibility make maintenance easier (and therefore less costly for you) and often leads to better search engine placement.
Usability and accessibility are very much like quality, you only notice when it is missing.
There are 2 primary sets of usability and accessibility standards, the W3C Accessibility Guidelines and U.S. Section 508 Guidelines. My usability and accessibility evaluations assesses your site for compliance with both these standards.
Critical Issues Evaluation
A critical issues evaluation does not check every usability and accessibility issue and will not catch all of the problems on a site. I will assess your home page and select a few additional pages to give you a good idea of how usable and accessible your site is right now. In your written report, I focus on the most critical areas, so you can prioritize any necessary changes.
Priority 1 issues are the ones which all Websites must meet or a significant group of people will not be able to access information on your site.
Some of the critical usability and accessibility issues include:
- Browser Compatibility - if your site doesn't load properly in their browser, they will leave quickly.
- Font Size - users want to be able to change the font size on your page in their browser, and the page must still be usable at larger font sizes.
- Page Contrast - the color of your background and text affect readability.
- Navigation - is it consistent and easy to follow.
- Page Titles - do they clearly tell the user what the page is about, are they consistent with the navigation.
- HTML Validation - ensures the HTML used on your pages is standards compliant.
- Link Validation - ensures that links are working properly.
- Alt Text - do all images have appropriate alternative text describing the images.
- Screen Resolution - resize the browser window to less than maximum, to verify that horizontal scrolling is not required.
- Keyboard Control - without using the mouse, can you use the keyboard to navigate through the links and forms on a page.
Detailed Evaluation
The detailed evaluation includes everything in the critical issues evaluation above, plus an overall 'user experience' assessment.
I will look at your primary entry pages as well as any specific pages you request.