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Online Journalism News

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

Posted: 20/11/07 By: Laura Oliver
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This is the second 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.

(Read our introduction piece for links to our assessment of other newspaper sites. Read the profile of our volunteers and expert)

The volunteers' views on Guardian.co.uk:

John

Navigating around the homepage of Guardian.co.uk using JAWS, John found this site offered the best experience in terms of accessibility compared to the other newspaper sites reviewed in this study.

He was particularly impressed by the presence of an accessibility tool as the third link read out by JAWS on entering the page. While this resizing tool - aimed at users with visual impairments - features on other newspaper sites, John said its prominence on Guardian.co.uk would be encouraging to other disabled users.

The first link found by JAWS on the page, however, was the option to sign in and register for the site, which, while non-intrusive for sighted visitors because of its position in the top left-hand corner of the page, suggests a barrier to accessibility when communicated to blind readers by a screen reader.

Browsing the homepage for the top news stories of the day John felt it took too long to tab to the news headings in the site's navigation bar.

"Sighted users might be able to identify where the news content is instantly, but I have no idea. JAWS has to work its way through all these different sections first," he said.

However, having found and entered the UK News section, JAWS immediately began to read the available links to news stories. Furthermore, having selected a story on the regeneration of Croydon, he found the article page was well-designed for use by JAWS.

"The page has to got me straight into the text of the article rather than trawling through adverts and page furniture, which is excellent."

Moving back to the homepage of the site from the news section, John was told by JAWS that he was entering 'Guardian Unlimited Home', which helped him ensure he was in the right place. However, he added that having been taken back to the top of the homepage a strategy or link allowing him to jump through the navigation bar would be a useful addition.

John had similar success with the search area of Guardian.co.uk: "It's offering me a web search first, but because it's told me that I've got a couple of radio buttons this is easy to change.

"It is immediately obvious where to put text entry into search as this is flagged up by JAWS, which allows you to search for these data fields."

On the results page [after a search for 'cycling'] JAWS was immediately taken through the advert links on the page, which, because they are relevant to the search term, cause confusion for a blind user, who cannot quickly identify that their location on the page and section in a separate box makes them advertiser links.

John also said that the efforts to organise the results were insufficient and could have been made more readily accessible to screen reader users:

"Obviously it's found lots of stuff for me and it's trying to suggest the kind of stuff I would like first. But I would have to do more of a search if I wanted to find something more specific. The big problem is that there is so much information on these sites, a blind person needs a way of whittling down these choices."

Trying to access the video section of the website also provided some mixed accessibility experiences for our screen reader user. Firstly, the video story links had a graphic of a video camera next to them - an aid to the sighted user - which was not labelled for John.

There were also issues when clicking on a specific video story link: "I was rather hoping it would start running a video as soon as I clicked on the link, but it didn't. Instead I've had to use a JAWS search for video on the new page to find the footage. Only through using the JAWS search feature did I avoid going through all the page furniture again."

Rosie's views (Dorton College students scored each site element from 1 - poor - to 5 - good -)

Finding the headline news on the homepage: "There are 247 links on this page, it's a nightmare. It doesn't tell you which is the lead story." [1/5]

Finding an article of interest: [Rosie started looking for stories about rugby] "The sport heading is not a link as far as I can see, I had to go into the football section and navigate from there." [1/5]

User interaction: [Rosie decided to leave a comment on Comment is Free] "It's accessible, but it takes forever. I got there eventually but it took five minutes to scroll through all the links, which makes me think is it worth it...you have to sign in to put a comment, but you would if you were using JAWS or not. It's not too bad." [3/5]

Site search: Abandoned this search as JAWS kept crashing. "I don't like this site. I've never known JAWS to crash this much on a web page."

Video/audio content: [Rosie decided to seek out some podcasts] "Link to find the right section wasn't difficult, although not all links seem to play...but overall not too bad." [3/5]

Overall design and layout: "Once you're on an article it's OK... I found what I needed, but too many links slowed it right down for JAWS users." [1/5]

Accessibility features for the visually impaired on Guardian.co.uk:

The Guardian has a tool allowing users to increase text size. It also has a dedicated accessibility section, detailing Guardian Unlimited's policy towards accessible design, the use of the text resizing tool and a series of shortcut keys to improve site navigation.

Response from Guardian Unlimited:

Stephen Dunn, chief technology strategist

"It's really good to see some testing done with real people.

"We are rolling out a new design for the website and we've taken this opportunity to work with the Shaw Trust, who do accessibility testing and also source employment across the UK for people with disabilities. They're able to test using all sorts of assistive equipment and have been testing templates of our site for the new design as it's rolled out and giving us feedback.

"We also sent our designers over to spend the day with them so they've been given a really good insight into accessibility - not just for screen reader users, but also people who have switch access [assistive technology for individuals with severe physical or cognitive impairments replacing the need of a mouse or keyboard] or who use other types of keyboard.

"We've also carried out some of the more mechanical testing as well and where we've had things pointed out to us that are problematic, we've made adjustments. It'd be fair to say that we haven't just done everything they've told us to do, because it's a subjective thing, but where it makes sense we've done so.

"We're rolling out the design, so there are still vast areas of the site that have low accessibility: video, search and blogs are all areas where we haven't done any testing on yet. With the video section we arguably should have done more testing before we launched, but it is definitely something we are planning to do.

"Some of the graphics aren't labelled on the site, but sometimes that's a deliberate choice to avoid the same thing being read out again and again - although it's something we'll probably ask the Shaw Trust to have a look at again.

"I'm concerned that the tester didn't come across our skip navigation links as we've tried to include them throughout the new site. We've also tried to design the layout of content so that the most important stuff is at the top - though some people may have different opinions on what is the most important stuff.

"The areas which have got the problems are the ones where we've done the least testing and we've got plans to revamp those areas as we go on."

"To people who are using the site and using assistive equipment - get in touch with us and give us feedback on any problems. We'd much rather do something for someone that has a real problem rather than based on a lab test, because then you know you've made your site accessible for a real person, not just theoretically accessible."

The expert's view:

Richard

"There is an easy solution to the problem with 'page furniture' which is to introduce a new link at the top of the page that takes the user directly to the main page content thus avoiding all the navigation links.

"This is called a 'skip links' option and is very easy to implement. The Mirror, Daily Mail and Guardian each provide this 'skip links' option with varying degrees of success.

"The Guardian and Daily Mail even try to provide a selection of shortcut keys that, fortunately, your reviewer did not test.

"This technology is incorrectly implemented on both newspapers and could cause users to save unwanted files on their computer rather than navigate to the required page."

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guardian | accessibility | blind | visual impairment |