Accessibility development and testing taken seriously

Posted on Tags: Web, HTML5

Anybody reading this post who currently works in the digital industry will surely agree that website accessibility standards for the visually impaired could be better. I got the opportunity to wear glasses that simulate the experience of being blind recently. It's a weird experience having one of your senses removed.

Strawberry has just been appointed to design and build a new website for the Hull and East Riding Institute for the Blind (HERIB) and it has to be perfect for all of the charity’s clients, from those with a slight visual impairment to those that are fully blind and lastly, those with full vision. It's not an accident that those with full vision are last on the list of importance.

The experience of wearing the simulation glasses was enlightening to say the least and I recommend that EVERY web developer try them to truly empathise with the needs of the visually impaired. Isn't it being arrogant assuming what it's like? I think so, and frankly, I've been guilty of it too. To try and help our team during the development of the site, I arranged for HERIB to visit our office on Friday 26th August to let the whole Strawberry team try out the glasses and experience what it’s like to be blind themselves.

Each team member wore the glasses and completed various tasks such as using the web or even just walking around the office wearing them. We're fortunate to have a good development team who are experienced in using coding techniques which aid the visually impaired but wearing the glasses really helped us to understand the challenges that people with a visual impairment face.

We all now want to do as much as we can to make browsing the internet a more enjoyable experience for people that are visually impaired. We have never performed this level of testing before (we're in the middle of heavy user testing) and are confident it will help us to do a better job.

After interviewing some people with a visual impairment recently (thanks go to Sheila, Malcolm and the gang!), I discovered that some big brands are simply getting it wrong. I discovered that little brands are getting it wrong. I realised that we were getting it wrong.

Ideally, I’d love to see the introduction of an ISO standard (or something similar) for the quality of websites. Anything that is more than a bunch of best practice guidelines that are complicated to read and that are wrapped up in internal politics. Equally, I appreciate this would be virtually impossible to implement and police and so is never going to happen - it's therefore got to be left to the industry, agencies and each individual web developer to make a difference.

We're working hard to make this a project to be proud of – a project that we can learn from and through sharing some of those lessons with you, a project that maybe readers of this blog can learn from too.

Myself and other developers will be writing little tips for developers who've not got access to the resources we have had on this project, publishing videos of user testing we've done and sharing any links and external resources we've found useful during this project – make sure you bookmark us (or use the RSS feed) to avoid missing any....