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Accessibility 2.0: How user-friendly is the Telegraph to the blind and visually impaired?

Posted: 21/11/07 By: Oliver Luft
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This is the fifth in a series of articles looking at the accessibility of national newspaper websites in the UK to blind and partially sighted users.

Journalism.co.uk asked blind volunteer John Allnutt to give us his take on several leading UK newspaper websites. John uses JAWS screen reading technology to navigate web pages and find his news online. He was aided and abetted in his assessment by pupils from Dorton College.

(The introduction piece links to our assessment of other newspaper sites. Also read the profile of our volunteers and expert)

The volunteers' views on Telegraph.co.uk:

John

When first entering Telegraph.co.uk, John's screen reader immediately began reading the main news content at the top of the site, a feature which he found particularly appealing as it allowed quick access to news.

According to John the text-heavy as opposed to image reliant layout of the homepage was suited to screen reader users: "Text-heavy is very good for JAWS as it tends to get snarled up on images - it just reads out 'graphic'. However, if you get some proper text set out on a page JAWS actually reads it fairly well, once you get used to the synthetic voice, it's very understandable."

However, when trying to access the top stories of the day - which for the sighted user lie 'above the fold' on the site's homepage - John encountered difficulties accessing the headline news.

"It would be nice if you did get to the main stuff first, that's what you like in any website. I'd expect to have to use links to jump to other stuff, but to have the main articles readily accessible at the top would be good."

Using the left-hand navigation bar to browse the site received a mixed response from John: "When reading JAWS has gone through the top navigation bar followed by the left hand navigation before taking you to the main page content. It could be recognising it as a columnised page, so it's been taught to read the left hand column first."

However, the alphabetised order of the navigation bar was extremely useful to the JAWS user as it helps them remember where certain links lie on the page.

Browsing the site for an article of interest to him as a reader, John used the navigation bar to locate an article in the education section. The link to the section and the story were both properly labelled. However, clicking through to the story did not provide instant access to the main article.

Instead, when the new page opened, JAWS read the headline but then had to trawl through the page furniture, such as the navigation bars and adverts.

"I've gone to the link and what I would like is for the new page to start with the article about the problem with children in schools - what it actually finds is all the basic stuff first and you have to wade through that first," he said.

"For a sighted person I realise that you would have it on the page, but the eye is much quicker than it is for me listening. Sometimes they have a link that says jump to main content, which would help, but there doesn't seem to be such a link on this page."

After a lot of tabbing - JAWS shortcut key for jumping between links - John was taken to the main content of the article. The layout of some Telegraph.co.uk articles includes a list of relevant links below a stand first.

John said that while these provided an extra delay in accessing the main content, they were properly labelled as links so did not cause him confusion. He added that a heading saying these were relevant or related links to other areas of the website would have been welcome.

When asked to use the search facility on the website, John used a JAWS function to find the term 'search' on the page. This is a trick he said he often uses to direct himself towards specific content, however, problems arise when the search term is not unique to the page.

"I don't find I can get to a search area as quickly as on other sites. It [JAWS] has found one type of search [featured in an news article], but it's not what I'm looking for - I feel like I'm going down a blind alley."

For each of the sites, John searched for the term cycling and assessed how the results were displayed. On Telegraph.co.uk, John said the layout of the page was geared towards a JAWS reader. The first thing JAWS read was the number of results found, giving the JAWS user an instant indication that their search has been successful and that they are on the right page.

Each result came with a brief description, section heading, byline, date and relevance to the search, all of which were read by JAWS and which gave the user a clear idea of where the link would take them.

A slight minus was the combo box at the top of the search results page offering the user to refine their search. As this appeared before the results, John said this could cause confusion, as it suggests that no results have been found that are relevant enough and that refining the search is a requirement.

To assess how well the site allows a blind or visually impaired user to interact with it, John used the left-hand navigation bar to tab through to the blog section - again helped by the alphabetical listing of the sections.

After clicking through to the blogs section, JAWS announced that the page contained a vast number of links - 732 to be exact.

Tele 2

While this is a good indication that there's lots of information on this page, John said that knowing there are so many links on a page could be off-putting for a JAWS user who wants to browse the area of the site. This number of links will slow them down and make it difficult to create an idea of where each element lies on the page.

"It gives me all the tags in alphabetical order and there's obviously a lot of information there. Apart from that it's okay: it took us straight into the list of topics, which is good. I can't see how you would go about writing a contribution from here though."

John found that while alphabetical the links to blogging topics also listed tags which were read out by JAWS without any particular context, making it appear to the visually impaired user as just a string of random words.

"Tags [the links to individual blogs] are not apparent what they are relating to - you'd have to have some prior knowledge. It's inaccessible if you have a visual impairment, but also inaccessible generally."

Josh (Dorton College students graded site function 1 (poor) to 5 (good))

Finding the headline news: "It's very good that the Telegraph divides up its home page using section headings and lines. The text is split up by pictures and the main titles are large." [4/5]

Finding an article of interest: "It wasn't hard to find different sections at all - dividers helped me recognise where a story ends and a new article starts. The length of the articles and the layout of the page meant it wasn't difficult to get an impression of the whole page." [4/5]

User interaction: "There's a lot of information here and the font on the list of blogs is very small and difficult to read. The dividing lines do help break up the blogs, but the page is very long, which makes it harder for me to get around." [2/5]

Site search: "The search results were split into different sections which was helpful. The layout reminds me of Google, which is something everyone is familiar with." [4/5]

Video/audio content: "This gives me a news report as well as something written. The text underneath is too small, but the pictures and sound really help. It starts playing straight away and it makes news a lot more accessible." [5/5]

Accessibility features for visually impaired users on Telegraph.co.uk:

There is no dedicated accessibility section on Telegraph.co.uk.

Response from Telegraph.co.uk:

Marcus Warren, editor of Telegraph.co.uk

"We want everyone to be able to enjoy Telegraph.co.uk's many offerings and we're continually working on improving the site. We are aware of the issues flagged up in the survey and hope to be able to fix most of them when we move to our new content management system."

The expert's view:

Richard

"A common problem found by your reviewer was the need to listen to an extensive list of links (navigation menus) and other 'page furniture' before getting to the main content of the page.

"This is because JAWS (and other assistive software) reads the page in the order in which it is written. The sighted user has his or her attention drawn to the main story in the middle of the page by the colour and size of the headline font and associated images.

"The blind user has to listen whilst JAWS works it way through all the menus, advertisements and other clutter on the page.

"To a lesser extent sighted people who cannot use a mouse accurately share this problem. If they want to use a link in the main story they have to use the keyboard tab key to jump through all the preceding 'site furniture' before they get to the main story."

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
telegraph | accessibility | blind | visual impairment |