evolt.org - IA/Usability

WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey Results

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:42:52 -0600

WebAIM conducted a survey of the preferences of screen reader users in October, gathering a lot of interesting data about how users utilize assistive technologies.

Increase Conversions in Long Web Forms by Resolving the Accidental Back Button Activation Issue

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:27:31 -0500

The issue of accidentally activating the browser back button through the keyboard while interacting with a long web form is applicable to users across expertise levels. The time and effort wasted by the user can be said as proportional to the number of input fields filled by the user before accidentally exiting the page. Since no application feedback indicating cause of the error to the user is provided, depending upon user expertise, the user may or may not realize the cause of the error. Realizing what went wrong does not guarantee the possibility of reverting the error either.

This leads to unnecessary loss in form conversions despite favorable user intent. A solution to resolve this issue (that the author hopes becomes standard practice) to plug the hole for lost conversion that translates to big numbers in absolute terms for high traffic websites is also provided.

Design for iPhone: a device that thinks different

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:02:55 -0500

One Saturday afternoon, I agreed to take my daughter to the AT&T store, just to LOOK at an iPhone... touch one... explore a little. MISTAKE. I should have duct-taped myself to the mast — and my wallet to my ass — because next thing I knew (after daughter demoed it as expertly as if she'd been using it all her life) we were walking out of the store with a brand new iPhone 3G. You'll love our coverage, the AT&T salesman assured as he packed the phone into a bag, only for us to discover upon arriving home that we had no reception within a quarter mile of our house.

Dang! I thought, now we have to move.

How Visual Design Can Impact your Bottom Line

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 08:35:55 -0500

How do you know if you should invest more time and money into creating a killer design? This case study examines how the look and feel of the site can impact your overall conversion rate which can provide justification for a little more investment. View the old site, compare it to the new site and review the conversion metrics that shows the before and after conversion rates.

Can WCAG 2.0 be simpler?

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:44:32 -0600

The new WCAG 2.0 standard draft sparked a hot discussion around web accessibility and the standard direction. The main issue is how to make it simpler and easier to understand for web developer community. The author investigates some WCAG 2.0 success criteria and explains, why they should be solved by improving technology of user agents.

Navigation - our visitors' travel guide

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 05:53:43 -0500

Your site navigation is what helps the visitors to find your content. Don't make it a technical portfolio but a helper tool. This article shows how the simplicity of real life navigational helpers can be applied to the web.

Understanding Color and Accessibility

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:25:50 -0500

We all know that color can make or break a site. But beyond eye candy appeal, color choices also impact usability and accessibility. This can impact up to 1 in 12 people, roughly 8% of a site's potential audience. The solution is not to use only boring colors or do only simple designs. In contrast, by understanding better the relationship between color and accessibility, the designer can make inspired and creative choices for the multi-device Internet.

Dynamic Elements - cloak and dagger web design

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:34:28 -0500

Dynamic elements make web pages more fun, more interactive and allow us to make pages more usable - if we have CSS, Javascript and a mouse at our disposal. This article discusses some uses of dynamic page elements with accessibility and usability in mind and shows where they fail and what to do to make them better.

Writing effective link text

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:37:12 -0500

Hypertext links are what connects web pages together and are at the very core of the Internet. As they're so important it's essential that your link text is effectively written and displayed - find out how.

Learning to let go

Tue, 18 May 2004 18:44:50 -0500

Accessibility and Usability are discussed a lot more lately than the last few years. Many rumours and half truths about accessibility and the law make non technical colleagues come up to us with questions about accessiibility. Most developers make the mistake of considering accessibility a technological problem, which is only partly the case. We do not need new technology, as old browsers are here to stay, we need to rethink the design of the products we make, we need to learn to let go.

The best web development tool - ever

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:51:51 -0600

What is the best tool to develop web products? Is there one that helps us create faster, more efficient and clean without costing a lot of money? Yes, there is, and you have been using it for ages.

I am USER, hear me roar!

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 23:13:17 -0600

You want them, you need them - Users. Hear from one of them what you might do wrong and what you can do to make up for that.

Stephen Hawking and Me - Flash MX Accessibility

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 05:40:50 -0600

The purpose of the article is to share my experience with Flash accessibility and offer the readers tips to make it work. Hearing your site can be quite unnerving, especially when the voice of Stephen Hawking reads it. There's also a Flash accessibility gotcha that I explain. It's not a breakthrough-code article, but should be helpful to those that want to make their Flash more accessible.

Practical Persona Creation

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 12:48:45 -0600

Don't know what a persona is? Want an interesting and fairly easy way to help you get to know and advocate for your users? Practical Persona Creation is a simple overview, with a few real world examples, of how to create and use personas as well as some ideas to get you started learning about personas and thinking about your user when you design and build Web sites.

Gorilla Usability

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:51:17 -0600

Not everyone has time to conduct a formal usability study, or the money to invest in a full blown usability initiative, and frankly, lots of times that might not be the best option anyway. Sometimes a designer or developer needs that one-on-one, maker-to-user interface. Gorilla Usability will show you some ways to get to know your users in a real world, out-from-behind-the-glass kind of way.