Category: Accessibility

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404 not found

Let us offer you a way to find it

(Or, a small UX improvement on this website)

I came across Joe Allen’s Smaply blog post, Journey mapping beyond the happy path: designing for edge cases, breakdowns, and recovery earlier today. It’s an excellent post, and you should read it.

Screenshot of a 404 page not found response on this website showing that the URL path has been turned into a search query.
Here, a request for the mangled path /the%20point%20of%20the/doing-is/the%20doing/not%20what-gets/done has been transformed into a search for the point of the doing is the doing not what gets done.

Coincidentally, I’ve been drafting a post here, provisionally titled “Look for the workarounds”. It covers the same topics; if you want to fix a service, you first need to figure out where it’s broken, cracked, creaking , leaking, or blocked.

Face it. You’re a plumber.

I was thinking mostly of internal, back-office users. Joe’s article focuses more on how to identify problems-to-solve on the front end.

The tells are different … if, during research, an internal user says “Excel”, prick your ears up. Every workaround involves Excel. I’ll try to publish that in the next week or so.

Joe’s post goes into great and useful detail on the frontend side of things, so go read that instead if you’re more interested in that side of things.

Instead, I offer you an anecdote.

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Standard accessibility acceptance criteria 

This is based on a document I wrote several years ago, a proposal to standardise test acceptance criteria for our quality assurance process.

Scottish Enterprise's device testing lab has a variety of different devices, from desktop to mobile and everything in between, all displaying the same content simultaneously.
Our test lab, from a few years ago

I deliberately avoided any reference to WCAG guidelines or success criteria – instead, I chose to keep the focus on the user experience, what they should be able to perceive, understand, and do, in that scenario.

It didn’t really get anywhere, but I came across it the other day and thought I may as well publish it; perhaps someone can make use of it.

It’s written in gherkin format, because that was what we were using at the time. But it could be adapted to any format you need

This is far from perfect. I welcome contributions from others more knowledgeable than me. Especially people with lived experience.

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I cycled to work

A man on a bike, wearing jeans and a dark grey sweater. cycling over a bridge over a river. Trees along the riverbank are in full leaf, and the scene is sunny.
Me, on a bike, crossing a new bridge over the River Clyde in Glasgow

I did something amazing today.

I cycled to the office. And back home again.

I know, billions of people ride a bike every day. I used to, too.

But more than 25 years ago, I slipped a disc and was told to stop cycling, because of the load on my lower spine. Since then, I’ve been diagnosed with #ataxia, which affects my balance and co-ordination.

Those are both pretty indispensable when riding a bike.

So I thought my cycling days were pretty much over, much like my mountaineering, football and running days.

But I recently inherited an #ebike that’s been sitting in a shed or garage for several years.

So I thought, why not?

I’ve been building up to this trip. It’s about 3.5 miles/5km to the office from where I live. Not far – I used to regularly walk to and from it when the weather was clement, until I couldn’t.

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The disability myth

Saying “No-one using our service has accessibility needs” is a bit like saying “We don’t need a ramp, no-one in a wheelchair has ever come up the stairs”.

An access ramp in a modern structure with large sloping glass windows admitting plenty of light on a sunny day.
An accessible ramp at Glasgow Queen Street train station. The long, low rake helps wheelchair users but also people pushing prams, or a bike, or – as in this case – a heavy suitcase. Basically, it makes life easier for everyone.
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Who are we willing to exclude?

A screenshot of a whiteboard with posit notes all clustered in the leftmost column

This is an exercise I like to run at the start of any project.

It’s based on a tweet a long time ago by Jamie Knight (and Lion, of course) which I can’t/won’t link to because, well, twitter. You can read Jamie’s bio on their site or LinkedIn profile.

The exercise is simple. At the start of any digital project, get the whole team – devs, testers, writers, designers, stakeholders, literally anyone you can round up – together, in-person or virtually, and ask the question:

Who are we willing to exclude?

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How to create inclusive personas, without creating inclusive personas

I watched a webinar earlier today about creating inclusive personas to encourage accessible, human-centred design. The instructors talked about the disabilities people have, the assistive technologies they use, and how to create inclusive personas that describe those needs.

A young man with brown skin and dark, cropped hair. He is wearing glasses, and a navy blue jacket over a grey t-shirt. His hands are held in front of his body in a pose that suggest he is in the middle of explaining something.
A portrait we used in one of our personas. This is a real person, who we’ve supported. No AI, no stock images.

And that’s all great, and laudable. But, with all my experience, I am not convinced it’s always the right approach.

Let me explain.

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On colours

Some readers may have noticed that Scottish Enterprise launched a new brand identity recently.

A screenshot of the colour contrast analysis tool. It is a table of circular cells with different foreground and background colours

Our logo was updated, and our typefaces and colour palettes changed.

I’m not a marketer, so that’s not my domain and I have nothing to say about that.

But I am a designer. And, when you’re designing communications material, whether it’s a website, an app, a brochure, a poster, a letter … these things matter. They are constraints you have to design within.

And yet, you have to produce an experience that’s accessible.

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WCAG 2.2

WCAG 2.2 is now a standard.

That means it’s (probably) now the de facto default against which your website or apps will be judged if a case is brought against you.

Although I would guess most jurisdictions will give you 6-12 months to catch up, depending on the scope of your organisation.

Update your accessibility statements, if you need to. Basic standards are still:

  • Perceivable
  • Operable
  • Understandanle
  • Robust

Under the hood, not much has changed. Biggest updates are on :focus styles, and the visibility of focused elements. Oh, and authentication. Not being able to rely on cognitive challenges is going to be a big change for many organisations.

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On twitter

A screenshot of my Twitter account on 6 October 2023

I rarely use twitter (I refuse Musk’s nomenclature) any more. There are more than enough fascists in real life.

But I saw some posts on Mastodon about how the site has removed headlines from links to news sites. So thought I’d have a look.

The #a11y implications are terrible. There is no link text any more, just an aria-label attribute on an <a> element.

But these also have tabindex=”-1″ meaning, for keyboard users, you can’t focus links using the tab key.

Images have empty alt attributes.

Screenreader users can probably still find them by asking their AT for a list of links.

But many people navigate websites primarily with a keyboard for reasons other than blindness or low vision.

Although this was … not unexpected … it’s still just so disappointing. Twitter had a very good and very active accessibility team who did a lot of good work. They were all fired.

Twitter is degrading its #UX –intentionally – to fulfil the whims of an oligarch.

I’ll not be back.

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Providing text alternatives for non-text content

I recently ran a session with some of our content developers covering alternative text, and the difference between alt text and captions. It seemed to be well received, so I thought I’d write it up.

A screenshot of HTML code showing markup for a <picture> element
Modern web design includes a variety of techniques to provide text alternatives for non-text content. In this example, a <figcaption> provides additional context,

“Text alternatives” is the first guideline of the first principle of WCAG 2.1. It’s literally the first thing to think about – and the reason why is pretty simple: not everyone can see images.

That may be because they have a vision disability. But it could also be because the image has been deleted, renamed or moved. Maybe their network connection is poor. Or their browser doesn’t support the format. Or they have disabled images in their email client because they have a 500MB monthly limit.

Whatever. It happens. Text alternatives are what users rely on when images are not available. Like this one right here:

This image is not available

The alternate text needs to replace the image. So your question becomes very definite:

What text do I need to provide if this image is not available? How might I describe the appearance, purpose, function, or meaning of this image to someone who can’t access it?

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On alternatives

This is for everyone

Tim Berners-Lee

As a content author myself – I am, actually writing this, with fingers – I know it can be hard to choose how to provide alternative text for non-text content.

Do you go full-on and launch into a full description of the image? Or is just a brief alt=”cat” sufficient?

Delicate white blossoms against blue sky.
Tree blossom

So, how would you choose to describe this image to someone who can’t see it?

I gave it a <caption>Tree blossom</caption>, and alt=”Delicate white tree blossom against a clear blue Spring sky”.

Is that perfect? Probably not.

I don’t pretend to understand the lived experience of people whose experience is not like mine.

Then I stumbled across An alt text decision tree on the w3c website.

And I thought, “this looks handy”.

And it is.

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How to create accessible Word documents

First, some definitions

An accessible document is a document that people with a range of physical and cognitive impairments can read and understand.

An accessible document is, typically, also a document that people with no physical or cognitive impairments can read and understand better, and faster.

Also typically, an accessible document is easier for content authors to maintain. Because it uses tools that are baked in to Word and other MS Office applications to support accessibility and improve workflow.

So, here are some tips on creating accessible Word documents.

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How we are improving the application process for customers with accessibility requirements

Introduction 

As an organisation we are  committed to do more testing with people with accessibility needs. This will ensure that our services can be easily accessed by everyone and to meet our legal obligations as a public sector organisation. We aim to recruit participants with accessibility needs in every round of research that we do to ensure that accessibility is considered at every stage of the project. 

We tested extensively the prototype for the Green jobs grant which was launched in the summer of 2021. 

Our goals  

We had a number of aims for this research:

  • To test the application journey with users who have a range of accessibility needs and to find what the challenges were for them in our journey  
  • To get clarity on what areas worked well  
  • We wanted to discover if different needs give conflicting priorities  
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Writing for people, not businesses

As an enterprise agency, our role is to support economic development, and this includes offering support and information to businesses in Scotland. This sometimes results in the misconception that our users are simply ‘businesses’.

But that’s not strictly the case. Even though our services are aimed at businesses, it’s still individual people that read our content, navigate application forms or contact our experts. They could be business owners, CEOs, accountants, finance directors, department heads, or any other individual within an organisation. And, being real people, there are a whole range of different needs and situations we need to consider when writing for them.

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Accessibility – Sharing knowledge between organisations

Using Skyscanner and Scottish Enterprise brand colour palette to show the same visual explanation to a11y being used for short for accessibility
Accessibility can be written as a11y for short — 11 is the number of letters between the first and last letters

Heather Hepburn is the Accessibility Lead for Skyscanner and has been running their accessibility programme for just over a year.

Stéphanie Krus works as a Service Designer and is a member of the ‘Disability Positive’ group at Scottish Enterprise.

We ‘met’ virtually in October 2020 after a talk at the UCD Gathering from Heather Hepburn (Skyscanner) and Adi Latif (AbilityNet): “Digital Accessibility – How to get your organisation on the right track” 

We realised we had a lot we could share regarding how we address and improve accessibility in our organisations.  So we planned a knowledge sharing session which was held online on 27 January 2021 with about 20 people.

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How we are improving accessibility in our practice

When I started at Scottish Enterprise in May 2019, my team had a whole day of Accessibility training with Hassell Inclusion. This was all the User Researchers, UX/UI designers and Service Designers being trained.

The developers and QA testers also got their own training and the content authors had a full day of training as well.

We were not starting from scratch. A lot of people in the team are really into accessibility. But it should be everyone’s responsibility. We should not rely on just a few people with a keen interest to make sure we deliver on Accessibility.

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Neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia) – Some simple tips

Neurodiversity is not a well known term. It’s used to reflect one the diversity of ways people’s brain functions. There is no ‘normal’ or ‘right’ way. People with autism, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) or dyslexia are part of this neurodiversity.

infinity symbol with pride colours
The infinity symbol represents autistic pride (Istock art)
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