Week 6 Reading Response and Links

Chapter 10, “Usability as a common courtesy,” if only everyone could use web common courtesy! The author boiled it down to a “goodwill reservoir.” If a user visits a site full of goodwill and encounters obstacles, their goodwill diminishes and affects future use of the site and their overall vision of the company. Goodwill can be replenished or depleted depending on the user’s situational goodwill when entering a site – i.e., how many sites have they been to before yours and is their goodwill reservoir already low?

Depleting User’s Goodwill:

• Hiding info, i.e. shipping rates, prices, customer phone numbers
• Requesting information that isn’t needed for the particular circumstances
• “Bedazzle” – flash usage or cumbersome ads that are in the way to what the user needs
• Amateur design

Replenishing Goodwill:

• Displaying the obvious points/needs
• Being up front
• Save the user extra steps
• Make content useful
• FAQ – updated and candid
• Comfort luxury – like printable pages
• Error recovery
• Apologize – let the customer know you’re aware of a situation but can’t fix it

Chapter 11, Accessibility - first and foremost, it’s the law, as indicated in Section 508 of the Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act. I think we’ve come a long way in web design since the author’s book came out in 2006. Better developer tools are here, CSS has made real progress and all browsers use it. But the basic principles the author points out are still the best advice:

• Fix the usability problems that confuse everyone – if it confuses the average users than it’ll certainly confuse a handicapped person even more. User testing will point out what confuses the “average user.”
• Read an article or book, surf the web, attend conferences – keep up to date on web conventions and accessibility tools and understand the software and hardware that handicapped persons are using.
• When using CSS: use the alt text for images; use form decorum by using HTML label elements; create a “skip to main content” link; make content accessible by keyboard; client side image maps instead of server side maps.

Web Accessibility for Section 508

By Jim Thatcher
Jim Thatcher.com, 7/30/11
http://www.jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm

Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, accessed 8/22/11
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Wave – web accessibility evaluation tool
accessed 8/22/11
http://wave.webaim.org/

3 thumbs up!!!!

25-point Website Usability Checklist

Usereffect – Strategic Web Usability, accessed 8/22/11
http://www.usereffect.com/topic/25-point-website-usability-checklist