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The term “web accessibility” means simply to make more of the Internet accessible to more people. Usually the term implies greater access for people with disabilities. These impairments may include visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. Initiatives to improve web access in this way can include speaking guides that render web pages in an audio format for the blind.

However, web accessibility is not limited to any single population but is a principle of web design that makes sites and software more flexible in order to meet vastly different user needs, preferences, and situations. From a grandmother in Boise managing her grandchildren’s photos online, to the PDA belonging to a plumber in New York that gets an alert from an email program, to a paraplegic athlete in Quebec who uses special tools to access the web; the ideals of web accessibility seek to accommodate all, as if serving a single individual, website or piece of communications technology.

Why Is Web Accessibility Important?

Because the Internet has become such an important resource when it comes to education, employment, government and health care, it is essential that it be made more accessible to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. Additionally, providing greater access to the web can help people with disabilities play a greater role in and achieve more fulfillment from society.

The possibility of unprecedented access to information and interaction for all people, via the Internet, has become even more real with the advent of usability and accessibility. Web technologies are easily overtaking the accessibility barriers to print, audio, and visual media, for the benefit of us all.

One of the hidden advantages of web accessibility is that it also makes the quality of the code that programs websites better. Many of the practices that are used to make a site more accessible are the same guidelines that developers should follow as part of good coding practices and is also what a good designer does to make a site more usable.

Making the Web Accessible

While it is web developers and the software that they use that are the infrastructure that pave the way for web accessibility, it is really the responsibility of CIOS and managers to value the benefits of making their websites accessible to a greater audience. The organizational decision-making needs to favor software that helps developers produce and evaluate accessible Web sites, and be usable by people with disabilities.

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops guidelines and techniques that describe accessibility solutions for web software and web developers, among other roles. The WAI guidelines are considered the international standard for web accessibility.

To learn more, read: Essential Components of Web Accessibility.

In terms of your company’s presence on the Internet, your website is everything that your customers, your employees, and your support staff are able to see. Despite being a two-dimensional world, you can do a great deal more with your website than you can with your office, and you can do it faster, cheaper and with greater room for creativity.

Of course, the same rules of common sense and decorum apply to the Internet as much as anywhere else, even if sometimes that evidence is in short supply. Try to approach the design and functionality of your website from the perspective of those who will actually be using it, the golden rule being: Do unto others as they would find easiest done. Find ways to get feedback and act on the information you’ve been given to move in a more constructive direction. At the heart of user-centered design is the notion that users gravitate towards what suits them best. The more users you have, the more robust your business will be.

1.) Usability Basics

You want to make sure you have a simple, easy-to-use website…but likewise, simple should not be misunderstood as boring. There’s a happy medium to be struck where your surfers’ attention can be gained and maintained easily. To each user, a website should feel intuitive, as if it were designed expressly with that individual in mind.

2.) Organization

Think of a website like a crime syndicate: the better organized it is, the more successful it will be. The fewer loose ends your website has, the less you have to worry about. The more half-naked girls you put out there, the more hits on your site…okay, forget about that last one.

Rather, remember: every aspect of your website should have a place and a purpose.

3.) Simplicity

Simplicity means more than just functionality of design or what widget goes where on a page. It’s a sense of a streamlined form in your website, and it has to do with everything from click-through to readability (a feature that too many errors, for example, can significantly hamper). Simplicity is both what makes a site elegant and functional. Consider this saying from the Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (translation by Stephen Mitchell):

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

This is more than some inscrutable Eastern philosophy. When you fill a website with every clanging color and jangling array of options, there is no emptiness to use, to lead a user where he needs to be. A path is filled with emptiness, but it is exactly what is required to convey someone from point A to point B.

4.) Color

We are visual creatures and we like the shiny. It is, perhaps, how a website called “hampsterdance” once became ubiquitous. Even better, it’s the effective use of color that can make the difference between professional and deplorable.

5.) Content

Well written content is just as important as any other design element on the page. Keywords (the terms that are used to find information on search engines like Google) that are skillfully embedded into the text but do not overwhelm it will draw users to your site, and, once they are there, will be integrated seamlessly to the overall feel of the content. This is how to implement search engine optimization without sacrificing syntax or usability. Well written content will complement the design and will provide a warm welcome to the users who use your site.

A final tip? Seek professional help.

No, not a psychiatrist—although if the thought of building and maintaining a professional-looking website is giving you thoughts of the couch, it’s definitely time to consider handing the reins to a professional web design firm.

There you have it: add a splash of chartreuse and this article would have followed the rules of website design itself. How meta-meta functional!

What is Usability?

“Usability” is often used to describe two related, but distinct, concepts. Usability can define the quality of a system, or it can refer to a process or set of techniques implemented during a design and development project. This second aspect is sometimes described as usability engineering, and is more accurately called user-centered design.

As usability refers to the quality of a system and the process of designing a usable system is “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use (from the ISO 9241-11).”

Broken down and simplified, ISO 9241-11 outlines that:

1. There are specified users of the system.
2. Those users have a set of specific goals.
3. The system should allow user goals to be met effectively, efficiently and with an outcome that at least meet the goals of the user.
4. The system will be used in a particular context (within a physical location or business process).

A system that is designed to consider all of these aspects is one that is user-centered.

Why is Usability Important?

When a system is highly functional for users, it is extremely beneficial to business.

As users achieve their tasks more easily and efficiently, not only is a feeling of achievement that people get when they use a computer system without frustration fostered that should not be underestimated, but time is saved and productivity is increased. On the other hand, when systems are difficult to use, an individual user cost may be small. Yet taken incrementally in terms of lost sales, customer satisfaction, staff productivity, manufacturing downtime and support requirements, the cumulative price tag may be cripplingly vast. When people are confronted with a difficult-to-use system, they tend to avoid it as much as possible, if not altogether.

How is Usability Attained?

The only way to determine whether a system is usable is to get end users to use it for real tasks.

The main way this is done is through usability testing. In a usability test, users of the system attempt tasks while being observed. The observers don’t tell the usability test participant how to use the system and they don’t answer questions - it is as if the participant were doing the tasks by themselves in real life.

The usability test identifies primary usability problems with a system (enabling them to be fixed); and collects quantitative measures of effectiveness and satisfaction before release.

The key aspects of a usability test are:

1. Participants involved are examples of existing or future users of the system (not managers or business owners).
2. Participants perform realistic tasks on the system.
3. The usability test is set up in a way that is as close to the normal context as possible, with the observers being integrated seamlessly or removed entirely from participant interaction.

What type of usability testing you do depends on the depth of usability issues you want to root out. If you are primarily concerned with major issues, a small and fast team will be able to handle it. A more professional lab setting with a greater number of usability testers will be required for more refinement. It doesn’t take a whole lot of thought to realize that the conclusions reached by some major studies make perfect sense, but it does take a great deal of effort to step out of one’s field of expertise even for great rewards.

Usability testing is not a cure-all. Fixing problems in a design is never as effective or as efficient as preventing design flaws in the first place. Of course, a perfect user-centered design is more of an ideal to aspire to than an achievable reality—but the two, each in concert, may help your business attain user harmony.

With big name partners like Harrah’s Entertainment, Sheraton Hotels, and T-Mobile backing Microsoft Surface, this is one piece of technology that is sure to transcend the way we are used to viewing digital technology, and sure to revolutionize the way we learn, share, create, buy, and much more within our homes, businesses, schools, and endless other mediums. Microsoft Surface is the future of digital interaction.

At Talkibie we’ve been preparing for a world where there is no software, no keyboard, no mouse, no wiring, but instead a collection of live tools for people to use, anywhere, and at anytime—this is the essence of Microsoft Surface. Take away your standard monitor, and replace it with a countertop, a table, maybe a wall or even the floor. Don’t use the mouse to move things on screen, use your finger tips. Forget wiring your MP3 player to the CPU, just place it on Surface, and then drag whatever content you want to where your MP3 actually appears. The intuitive user interface works without a traditional mouse or keyboard, allowing people to interact with content and information by using their hands and natural movements. Microsoft Surface also recognizes physical objects placed on it, so, you can organize your Palm Pilot without having to connect wire ports. This represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content.

Unlike a standard touch screen, Microsoft Surface recognizes dozens upon dozens of points of contact, making collaborative work not only ideal, but quintessential for harnessing the productivity rate that the standard point-and-click mouse could never provide. The standard tabletop will forever be transformed into a vibrant, radiant, interactive surface.

The power of this technology will easily be seen evolving in corporate America. Surface will provide customer reps the ability to provide a real service – from Financial Advisors to Real Estate agents; customer service just became more personal.

The first version of Microsoft Surface will be 22 inches high, 21 inches deep, and 42 inches wide, on an acrylic tabletop with an interior frame that is powder-coated steel. Surface could become the standard for customer interaction in hotels, restaurants, retail, and public entertainment venues later this year. Be assured that Surface will find its way into the design of web applications, most importantly, those that interact with customers.

Learn more at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

We’ve all heard amusing horror stories about companies whose marketing campaigns went terribly wrong due to bad translations. For instance, Pepsi’s slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” was interpreted in Taiwan as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead”. Another prime example is American Airline’s “Fly in leather” tagline, which, when translated literally for the Mexican market, invited passengers to fly in the nude. These tremendous oversights, while entertaining, have the effect increasing the cultural awareness in businesses around the world. Errors such as these, coupled with increasing numbers of non-English speaking web users, have led many companies to adopt a strategy of “localization” when it comes to presenting themselves in the global marketplace through the web. More than simply careful, appropriate translations, localization refers to an adaptation of language, content and design to reflect local cultural sensitivities as a whole.

Since web sites are increasingly the lens through which a company is viewed, web designers are considering more than just literal translations in order to increase their positive image and presence in overseas markets. More and more, the trend is to consider numerous factors of cultural significance when creating a web site. Consider funneling customers to tailored sites based on their cultural identifications; you can ask users to select their home country before entering the site, for example. Formatting for date and time, representations of numbers, currency symbols, the tone of content, and even color is important to putting the best foot forward. For example, during a 1994 campaign, the telecom company Orange changed its approach when running ads in Northern Ireland. Their slogan, “The future’s bright…the future’s Orange,” was inappropriate because the color orange, associated with the Orange Order, a Protestant militant group, would alienate a large group in the target market. Similarly, an overly casual message, anglicized numerical values, even non-metric specs to describe a product, can be a turn-off to a potential customer with different cultural expectations.

Localization can be accomplished by careful research in your design. Many companies are using anthropological consultants to give them the edge over their competitors. Experts with vast bases of knowledge can interpret cultural symbols and push you in the right direction. When crafting your message, be sure to use translators and writers who are sensitive to the cultural complexities of the target audience. Not all Spanish dialects are created equal: a perfectly inane term in Argentina could have a foul meaning in Puerto Rico. Local literacy levels in Spain may be quite different from those in Ecuador, and different terminology should be considered. Use a translator who speaks the local dialect of your audience.

Many times, companies try to bypass errors in translation by using non-textual means of communication, but local trends must be considered in this circumstance as well. Tide detergent created a word-free billboard with three drawings. The leftmost showed a woman frowning and examining a dirty shirt. The second showed her loading the shirt into a washing machine and adding Tide. The furthest right frame showed her happily holding up the now-clean shirt. Many of you have spotted the problem with this ad: some languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, are read from right to left, which makes Tide a very unattractive product indeed. Carefully researching your intended audience’s habits and needs can prevent your customer from misunderstanding your message.

Just as you would consider keywords for optimizing your search engine results in English, this must also be a priority when developing a localization strategy. Your translator should use the correct language encoding to ensure that text in other alphabets and configurations will display properly. This is essential for languages using non-Roman alphabets, where the text will need to be reorganized for ease of reading. If the language is encoded incorrectly, users will have difficulty viewing your site and search engines may not be able to categorize it. For example, if your site is encoded correctly in Korean, a search engine might deem it more relevant to a user who performed a search in Korean than a similar site encoded in English. However, if the encoding is incorrect, you have lost this basic advantage over your competition. And, as always, use the most accurate local term for your product and services, not an exact translation.

Businesses are increasingly competing on a global level, and the internet is the staging ground for launching a product to an international market. Considering local customs, culture, and needs is the key to reaching a global audience without looking foolish. Steer away from literal translations, and don’t make assumptions about your audience without first doing the proper research. If successfully done, your web site will positively reflect the image of your company abroad. One last example: Coca-Cola, after careful research of over 40,000 Chinese characters phonetically similar to their product name, hit upon a winner. The characters they chose roughly translate as “happiness in the mouth”.