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womble -> Accessibility and web enabled devices (12/28/2007 10:14:00)
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The subject of Womble's rambling for today is "Accessibility and web enabled devices"...[;)]
...for those who haven't looked particularly closely into accessibility, it may seem that web accessibility is all about catering for users with disabilities, but the side of accessibility that's not mentioned so often is the variety of devices that are web enabled these days. Accessibility's not just about disability - in it's widest sense it covers also interoperability and platform independence - making the web usable on the widest variety of web enabled devices.
As some OF members may be aware, I recently spent some time in hospital researching this (oh, and while I was there I had some treatment for an ongoing problem too [:D]). Many UK hospitals use a "patient entertainment" service called Patientline which is a combined telephone, TV, radio - and some versions of the Patientline units also allow internet access and games playing too. The hospital where I was staying was one that has Patientline internet access (the fact that half the web's blocked by their over-zealous firewall's a different matter [:@]), but one thing I found in attempts to keep myself amused and visit my usual sites was that there were a number of very frustrating limitations:
- javascript isn't well supported (e.g. javascript used to open new pages and fly-out menus etc. simply doesn't work)
- neither is Ajax (practically nothing Ajax based worked)
- pop-ups and overlays aren't enabled.
This meant that some sites were more difficult to use - for example although I could log into OF and reply to posts using the "fast reply", I couldn't use the normal reply pop-up, and I couldn't start new threads or reply to PMs. Other sites were totally unusable. One site I use a lot makes heavy use of Ajax, and I couldn't even log on to that site, let alone do anything once I got there.
The other very frustrating thing about the system is the tiny keyboard and rollerball mouse the internet part of the system uses. The keyboard/mouse is inside a remote control type unit, probably marginally larger than a TV remote control. The number-pad unfolds and inside is the keyboard/rollerball thing. The keyboard, a full QWERTY keyboard, has small rubber keys which are probably around 5mm diameter and the rollerball similarly is a small rubberised thing of probably marginally a little wider diameter, and two further rubberised buttons for the left and right mouse button, and trying to navigate your way around a web page is using that is frustrating at best, and almost impossible at worst.
With a tiny rollerball as your 'mouse' trying to hit a small target on the screen with the cursor took usually at least two or three goes, and of course the screen is a lot smaller too (on most Patientline units a fair bit less than your average laptop screen). A lot of the time it was easier (providing the page had sensible tab orders and/or skip links) to use keyboard navigation, and although normally I don't have a problem with using a normal keyboard and mouse, it gave me a little of an idea what it must be like for someone who can't use a normal mouse etc. Trying to type on the tiny keyboard was tedious in the extreme and trying to type a message of this length would have been impossible.
Though probably the % of your web visitors who are stuck in hospital and using one of these things is extremely small, it gave me a better idea of how difficult to use the web is using this sort of device, and with the range of things that are web enabled increasing every day I'm sure there are other methods of accessing the web that are similarly frustrating to use and have limitations on the use of javascript etc.
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