UW Accessible IT Capacity Building Institute
Last Friday I attended the University of Washington’s Accessible IT CBI. The goal of this conference was to “To increase our collective capacity to develop, procure, & use IT that is accessible to all students, faculty, staff & visitors of all campuses of the University of Washington.”
While working at UW, I have been fortunate to have meet accessibility experts who have helped me become a better web designer/developer. This began by increasing my awareness about the challenges that disabled users face. UW’s Accessibility groups offer presentations, workshops, one-on-one consultations to test, teach best practices and methods used to create accessible websites, videos, apps and documents.
Haring Center Website
In addition to my work on the iBESTT Project, I was hired to rebuild the website for Haring Center. While Haring Center had their website redesigned a year ago, they found that the “new” site was not as user-friendly as they had wanted. I was hired to create a more user-friendly website and to act as web master.
As part of the rebuild, I created a custom child theme based on the WordPress Twenty Twelve theme. This is one of WordPress’ free default themes that I’ve found to be very stable, responsively designed and easy to customize.
The Haring Center for Research and Training in Inclusive Education is an integrated early childhood program dedicated to improving the lives of children with developmental disabilities and other special needs as well as their families and those who work on their behalf.
Visit the Haring Center website.
Rocket Surgery Made Easy
Rocket Surgery Made Easy
Steve Krug’s latest book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, outlines a streamlined approach to usability testing for websites and products.
FACT: Most websites have usability problems that can be easily found by user testing. Unfortunately there isn’t always the budget, time or the recognized need to conduct professional user testing. Because of this, Krug advocates that “everyone should be doing simple user testing”.
“Simple user testing” is conducted with a limited number of participants (3) who spend approximately 50 minutes testing the usability of a website by trying to complete requested tasks (i.e. how would you order a book from this site?) and asking them to “think out loud” as they use the site. Frequently the worst problems with a site are revealed by watching how these participants navigate through a website.
This kind of usability testing is done to get insight into how people are using the site and to discover if there are ways to improve the site. Krug suggests testing sites early — even at the design stage (sketches on the napkin!) and testing frequently — once a month. By taking notes about what the most important problems are at each stage, changes can be made to improve the site before the next round of testing.
Like his earlier book, Don’t Make Me Think, Krug’s informative writing style details the importance of usability in an enjoyable and straight-forward manner. This book is a great resource for anyone who wants to create a more effective, user friendly website.
Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug: a YouTube Usability Demo
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