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.
(Our introduction piece links to our assessment of other newspaper sites. Read the profile of our volunteers and expert)
The volunteer's views on Dailymail.co.uk:
John
The most positive feature in terms of accessibility found on the Daily Mail website was the regular use of a 'skip to main navigation' link, which allowed our user to bypass much of the page furniture on each page of the site, including the homepage.
The inclusion of a weather update on the top of the homepage appealed to John, as it provided quick, accessible information without the need for searching the site.
Tabbing through the site John quickly came to a link for a news section and was pleased with the priority of this link in the site's navigation. However, searching for the same section using a JAWS search lead him to 'showbiz news' several times as this dominated the page – again highlighting the problem of a screen reader, who may be searching for a term without realising it is not unique on a website.
Using a third strategy - JAWS can create a list of the links present on the website - John experienced some flaws with Dailymail.co.uk's accessibility: "In JAWS list of links it doesn't say the section headings in the side bar count as links. The links available to JAWS also seem to differ from the headings on the page, which a sighted user would have access to."
Having selected a link to an article on the Home Secretary, John found that JAWS once again had to trawl through furniture of the page. After doing so, however, the screen reader did reach a link allowing him to skip the page navigation.
Selecting this link, John was successfully given quick access to the main body of the article, though as a slight negative the caption text on a photo accompanying the story was read out by JAWS after the headline without telling the user that this was a caption.
Assessing the site's search facility, John found its presence above any form of navigation on the homepage made it particularly accessible. He also said it was clear where he should enter his search text.
The Daily Mail's search, however, already includes some text within the search box that the user must delete, which causes confusion for the blind user who has not been given a visual clue that this text is present.
John's thoughts on the accessibility of the search results were equally mixed: "The sponsored links come first which is annoying, but they are properly labelled as sponsored links which is something.
"It would be nice if they gave me their top 10 selection first, although labels appear on the results and it gives you a little summary of each one which is a big help."
Clicking on a specific search entry JAWS was forced through the page furniture again to John's frustration.
"I've asked it to take me to a specific link about cycling and instead I'm hearing about Prince Harry and eligible girls for him," he said.
Within the blogs section of the site - which John said was comparatively easy to find as a link to it was featured in the short list of headings on the site's navigation - a new left-hand navigation bar caused some accessibility problems.
Not only was this change in page furniture disorientating for John, who was now uncertain as to which links he could use to navigate from this page to other sections of the site, but it contained links to individual blogs listed by the writer's name.
As such these links were completely out of context for a screen reader user, who cannot see the images of the bloggers contained in the page's main content that help explain these links.
An advantage to accessibility on this site was found when using the Daily Mail's video content. John was impressed that a video launched immediately when he selected a link - a feature he had not found on most of the other newspaper websites reviewed.
However, playing the video opens up a new window on the screen without informing the user and as such hinders their ability to orientate themselves on the site and navigate away from this feature.
Charlotte's views: (Dorton College students graded site function 1 (poor) to 5 (good))
Finding the headline news: "Pretty straightforward." [3/5]
Finding an article of interest: "My eye is draw to the headlines rather than topic links of search, which are a bit more difficult to find, but overall, not too difficult." [4/5]
User interaction: "I found leaving a comment very easy indeed, straightforward after you have put the code in [code to block spam]." [5/5]
Overall design and layout: "It's pretty easy to find things you want from the home page." [3/5]
Video/audio content: "Hard to find the specific video section buried deep in the site, but easy to watch [once there]." [3/5]
Accessibility features for visually impaired users on Dailymail.co.uk:
The Daily Mail has an accessibility section featuring the steps the site has taken to comply with accessibility standards as set my the World Wide Web Consortium. The site also has a link to a text-based version of the the website, which may assist visually impaired and screen reader users.
The expert's view:
Richard
"Only the Daily Mail provided a text-only version of its website for blind and visually impaired people, but the link to this was so far down the page that blind people may fail to find it (as did your reviewer).
"However, the provision of text-only pages is not the only, or indeed the most desirable, solution for accessibility.
"The newspapers tested could easily apply the W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WAIG) to their existing content, make better use of their stylesheets so that important content is coded near the top of the page and use the HTML codes for headings and lists in a proper manner. This would avoid a number of the problems your reviewer encountered."
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