Usability and Accessiblity

For better audience-driven website design for ALL.

WEB DESIGN PRINCIPLES OF USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY

USABILITYWe want to make our portfolios as easy to use as possible.

UNDERSTAND AND MEET USER EXPECTATIONS

• Ensure that your portfolio format meets user expectations, especially related to navigation, content, and organization.

• Users define 'usability' as their perception of how consistent, efficient, productive, organized, easy to use, intuitive, and straightforward it is to accomplish tasks within a system.

DESIGN FOR COMMON BROWSERS• Designers should attempt to accommodate ninety-five percent of all users. Ensure that all

testing of a Web site is done using the most popular browsers.

DESIGN FOR COMMONLY USED SCREEN RESOLUTIONS

• Design for monitors with the screen resolution set at 1024x768 pixels.

• By designing for 1024x768, you will accommodate this resolution, as well as those at any higher resolution.

ENABLE ACCESS TO THE HOMEPAGE• Enable users to access the homepage from any other page on the Web site.

LIMIT PROSE TEXT ON THE HOMEPAGE• Requiring users to read large amounts of prose text can slow them considerably, or they

may avoid reading it altogether.

AVOID CLUTTERED DISPLAYS• Clutter is when excess items on a page lead to a degradation of performance when trying

to find certain information.

ESTABLISH LEVEL OF IMPORTANCE• Establish a hierarchy of importance for images and information and infuse this approach

throughout each page on the Web site.

ENSURE VISUAL CONSISTENCY• Visual consistency includes the size and spacing of characters; the colors used for labels,

fonts and backgrounds; and the locations of labels, text and pictures.

USE BOLD TEXT SPARINGLY• Use bold text only when it is important to draw the user’s attention to a specific piece of

information.

USE SIMPLE BACKGROUND IMAGES• Background images can make it difficult for users to read foreground text.

• A single, large, complex background image (including a picture) can substantially slow page download rates.

ENSURE THAT IMAGES DO NOT SLOW DOWNLOADS

• User frustration increases as the length of time spent interacting with a system increases.

• One study reported that users rated latencies of up to five seconds as ’good.’ Delays over ten seconds were rated as ’poor.’

ACCESSIBILITYWeb sites should be designed to ensure that EVERYONE can use them.

DO NOT USE COLOR ALONE TO CONVEY INFORMATION

• About eight percent of males and about one-half of one percent of females have difficulty discriminating colors.

PROVIDE TEXT EQUIVALENTS FOR NON-TEXT ELEMENTS

• Text equivalents should be used for all non-text elements, including images, graphical representations of text (including symbols), image map regions, animations (e.g., animated GIFs), applets and programmatic objects, ASCII art, frames, scripts, images used as list bullets, spacers, graphical buttons, sounds, stand-alone audio files, audio tracks of video, and video.

AVOID SCREEN FLICKER• Five percent of people with epilepsy are photosensitive, and may have seizures triggered

by certain screen flicker frequencies.