Accessibility

Billions are spent on communicating with customers, yet a significant percentage of people are being overlooked. 8 to 10 percent of the overall population can benefit from an accessible Web.  In the UK two million are blind and partially sighted.  As more of these people go online, services such as banking and shopping become more important for them.  Friends, family and carers are also affected customers and it is also well known that vision problems increase at the age of 50 years and over. An accessible website can increase market share and audience reach, ultimately improving your online conversion.

Why use RedEye?

RedEye’s specialist usability division optimum.web was established in 2000 to provide usability and accessibility services to public and private sector organisations wanting to deliver excellent user experiences to people visiting their web sites.

We have helped major brands such as ASOS, M&S, Ford and esure as well as major Government departments and parliament.uk.

Uniquely positioned to incorporate our usability and accessibility skills with web analytics enables us to offer qualitative and quantitative data services that help improve the online experience better than ever before.

We help clients at the early stages of design and development by providing expert consultancy and iterative testing. Ideally sites should be designed from the outset to meet web standards and accessibility best practice.  However even an existing design can be tested and improved through accessibility user testing and accessibility audits.

The detail…

Accessible sites adhere to web standards and as such are more search engine friendly, increase operating efficiencies and are usable on emerging platforms (e.g. mobile, TV).

Legislation, such as the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), is on the increase and the need to reduce potential legal liabilities is rapidly moving up the corporate agenda.  Additionally, demonstrating ‘social responsibility’ can reap benefits that may be less tangible than economic or technical ones.

Accessibility audits

We have conducted accessibility auditing for compliance with the Worldwide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) since 2002. More than 200 audits have been conducted using WCAG 1.0 and more than 30 audits have been conducted using WCAG 2.0.

Manual testing is the only way to fully audit a website for compliance with the WCAG because automated tools can only verify a small subset (approximately 25%) of the checkpoints.

Most websites are based on a relatively small number of page templates so it is sufficient to test a subset of the pages.

Accessibility User Testing

We have conducted dozens of accessibility user testing projects. User testing provides an assessment of the level of accessibility the website actually does achieve. WCAG testing is a necessary foundation, but there are many other factors that affect accessibility, particularly the comprehensibility of the content. User testing is conducted in the same way as our usability user testing, in one-to-one moderated sessions – either in our specialist lab with client observation facilities; or in the user’s own home.