Global Accessibility Awareness Day: the experiment

As Global Accessibility Awareness Day (#GAAD) made its debut on May 9th, Brightwaver Lauren Keith went mouseless for an hour. Here's her review on the difficulties and hurdles she faced while navigating the web.

It's the start of the day and the first thing I do is locate a mouse for my laptop – a traditional, hand-held, scrollable mouse. I don't want to be slowed down by a touchpad. I like to be able to switch from one monitor to the next, open and close windows, search files and navigate with a swift wrist movement and click. You can understand my concern then when I'm told that for an hour today, not only must I unplug my trusty mouse, but the marginally less intuitive alternative, the touchpad, is also off limits. I will be relying solely on my keyboard.

Downoad our free guide: The essential guide to designing inclusive e-learning

As part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Brightwave employees are experimenting with alternative ways of accessing their computers. We are using keyboard shortcuts rather than a mouse or touchpad to get around, the same way that a person with a motor (muscular or joint) impairment might. As a company we aim to make online learning an engaging and user centric experience, so it will be useful for me to understand the issues faced by the physically impaired, to whom accessing e-learning and using a computer in general, might be a more challenging experience.

Facebook, online banking and news sites: How accessible is daily business?

I decide the best way to understand the limitations of using keyboard shortcuts as opposed to a mouse or touchpad, is to go about my regular activity. So my first point of investigation is Facebook - I want to reply to a message I received yesterday.

I manage to open my browser and sign in, albeit with some faffing. But the real problem presents itself when I reach the home page. If you’ve noticed how over-cluttered Facebook is with links and icons, you can imagine the difficulty of relying on the Tab key alone to circulate the items on the page, that said a bit of Googling goes a long way and  I discover that the social media giant has its own set of keyboard shortcuts. I'm able to access my inbox using Alt + Shift + 4, rather than circulating through each and every item.

However, once in my inbox, I'm again faced with the inescapable too-many-items-on-the-screen-dilemma. If I want to reply to a message far down the list, I have to keep Tab held down until I finally get there. And who knows how I then actually retrieve that message, let alone reply to it…

You can read more about the inclusiveness of social media in Virginia's recent blog.

Next I try a UK-based retail bank, I want to log in to check my balance but enter a number from my password in the wrong box. The cursor's automatically moved on to the next field and I can’t return to it with the backspace key. I circulate using Alt, but end up opening a new window. I haven’t finished logging in and I’m left static on the page. If only I could remember how to refresh or open a new tab.

But probably the most stress-inducing website to use with shortcuts is ANY kind of news website. Imagine how many links are likely to exist on any one page - it’s quite an art to land on the one you want.

I come to realise that this probably won't be something I'll pick up in a day. To me, this is an entirely new language - an expansive series of secret key sequences and commands. Some websites, like Facebook, and of course, brightwave.co.uk, have their own more simplistic shortcuts, potentially limiting this problem and generally speeding up navigation.

The bigger picture

But this is just the start of things. Of course there are many other disabilities that can affect a person's ability to use a computer - audio, visual, cognitive or speech, to name a few (you can read more about this on the Web Accessibility Initiative Website). The number of affected individuals will also continue to grow with our ageing population and it’s important ethically, economically and often legally, that these people are catered for.

It's thought 4% of the population has a visual impairment that needs accommodating (Dr Rowland, Exec Director of WebAIM). At Brightwave, we're particularly attuned to this. We often provide screen-reader versions of our courses so that everything presented on a page can be read out. Using voice recognition technology, the entire course can function with audio and a microphone. In other instances, we compile PDF versions of our courses which offer a more structured way of reading and can be navigated using headings and shortcuts. We also use enlargeable text and tagged images.

In fact, these alternative ways of accessing technology may seem long-winded or daunting to someone unfamiliar to them, but they are revolutionising people's lives. It's about designing inclusively  to make sure everyone who needs to can gain access to your content. For now at least, I have plugged my mouse back into my laptop…

Downoad our free guide: The essential guide to designing inclusive e-learning

Useful external links

• Global Accessibility Awareness Day website
• Facebook page
• A lecture on web accessibility by Dr Rowland of WebAIM
• Designing web accessibility for a beautiful web, by Andy Clarke
• The Web Accessibility Initiative
• Accessibility Introduction: why accessibility, by Nick Pettit
• The Website Accessibility Accreditation Service

You may also like:

• Blog: Social Media and the Corporate Tribe - A Review of Social Learning Conference 2012 (#SLCONF)
• Blog: Agility and technical innovation in e-learning
• Blog: Vive la difference
• Blog: How to make e-learning accessible - the learner's experience
• Blog: How to make e-learning accessible - design tips and tricks
• Blog: How to make e-learning accessible - thinking inclusively

Call us on 01273 827676 or email us to find out more about our corporate and social learning solutions and how we can help your business.

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