Accessibility & Usability for Technology Applilcations

Accessibility and usability on the Web go hand-in-hand – so much that the two terms are often mistakenly interchanged. Both deal with how a visitor experiences a site, but accessibility and usability pertain to distinct parts of their experience. Before looking at what accessibility and usability on the Web entails, it is helpful to look at the meanings of the words themselves.

What are Accessibility and Usability?

Merriam-Webster defines accessible as an adjective meaning that something is “capable of being reached, influenced, used, seen, understood, or appreciated.”  Accessibility on the Web deals with barriers – either physiological or technological – that would make visitors incapable of using a Web site. Physiological barriers, such as impaired vision or limited muscle control, and technological barriers, such as devices with small screens or slow connection speeds, can adversely affect a visitor’s capability to use the site.

Merriam-Webster defines usable as an adjective meaning that something is “convenient and practicable for use.” Therefore, for a Web site to be usable, it should be easy for a user to navigate, understand, and otherwise interact with the site. Interactions with a Web site should follow visitors’ expectations that have formed through using other Web sites and computer software. Elements that do not behave in logical, predictable ways can hamper a visitor’s ability to use the site.

Why Worry About Accessibility and Usability?

There are a handful of government regulations mandating certain accessibility features from government agencies. Although private organizations are not legally bound to follow them, doing so is the responsible thing to do and usually requires only a small amount of diligence.

High accessibility is also a very effective method of search engine optimization. It can be helpful to think of search engines as users with substantial constraints – they cannot read text in images, nor can they “view” many other kinds of multimedia content. Increasing a web site’s accessibility to humans also allows the search engines to “see” its content better.

While high accessibility enables various visitors to use a site, usability helps keep the visitors there. Web site visitors have notoriously short attention spans. Poor usability quickly wastes away those attention spans.  Ensuring that the site behaves in logical, predictable ways help keep visitors from going right back out the door opened by good accessibility.

Bringing Everything Together

Increasing a site’s accessibility increases the number of people, and sometimes programs, which can use the site. Increasing a site’s usability increases how much a visitor can get out of the site once he, she, or it is there. Together, accessibility and usability help maximize the number of people that get the message of the site. Ensuring that a site has good accessibility and usability will satisfy regulations for government agencies, make the site more visible to search engines, and help reach visitors with the purpose of the site.

The Terradon Communications Advantage

TCG can help improve a Web site’s or application’s accessibility and usability through our experience with a variety of sites and applications, exploration of accessibility and usability trends,  and practice of designing accessible and usable systems. Our systems are built to be accessible and usable by design, employing best practices from the very beginning of a project rather than attempting to tack it on at the end.