Web Usability and Accessibility
"Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror" - Byrd Baggett
Web usability refers to the effectiveness of transferring information via the Internet. It is about the smooth interaction of an end-user with website content. For example, if I don’t see any navigational buttons on your website because they are hidden by something, you have a usability problem because I cannot use your website to find the information that exists on your page. If your font is unreadable by any human your website content doesn’t matter. Usability is important for SEO because once people find your website via search engines, they need to be able to use that website to read your content. If they cannot use your website, any Search Engine Optimization work is pretty useless. When developing web pages make sure that your pages degrade gracefully, they still work even on a cell phone or in older browsers.
Good usability also benefits SEO in more direct ways. For example, some usability experts argue for explicitness, accuracy, verbose phrasing, grouping related things together, putting important things at the top and left, being consistent, using descriptive values, etc. Considering one of these usability recommendations, putting important things at the top, is also beneficial for SEO because search engine spiders also consider content that is higher in the code to be more important. For more information on usability, check out Step-by-Step Usability Guide, About’s Usability on the Web, and the Web Style Guide.
Web accessibility refers to making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. The goal of accessibility is making web pages easier to navigate and read and it can be helpful to all readers. Well designed websites give all users equal access to information and functionality. They also directly benefit search engine optimization. Consider blind users that use text-to-speech software or screen readers to view websites. In order for this software to work properly, your website has to be coded with semantically meaningful HTML, with textual equivalents provided for images and with links named meaningfully. An image without an ALT tag to explain what the image is about is meaningless for the blind. But, good ALT tags are also an essential part of SEO, so good accessibility will directly benefit search engine optimization.
So, what is important in web accessibility? Consider your audience, think about the fact that the population is getting older and older which means poor sight is going to be a larger and larger issue in the future. Make your images and text large or enlargable. Make your links stand out by being underlined and/or colored. If you are adding flashing effects to your website just for a “wow” or “cool” factor either make them optional or just get rid of them. For more information on accessibility, check out Wikipedia’s article on Accessibility, W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative, and Section508 which refers to the Section 508 law that requires Federal agencies’ electronic and information technology to be accessible by people with disabilities.
Tags: user experience