[atlarge-discuss] FYI: Jakob Nielson on Web usability and accessibility

[espresso@e-scape.net]

+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 135, 17 April 2003.

The email newsletter on electronic government,
UK and worldwide.

[BIG snip]

++SECTION TWO: INTERVIEW - JAKOB NIELSEN.

+08: A FAT LOT OF USABILITY?
by Dan Jellinek  dan@headstar.com .

One of the world's leading champions of web usability, Jakob Nielsen,
was in the UK last month to run a week-long series of seminars.
Talking exclusively to our sister publication E-Access Bulletin
(http://www.headstar.com/eab), Nielsen elaborated on the connections
between usability and accessibility, and the poor track record of
government sites in meeting user needs.

Nielsen says the field of usability - how easy it is for a user to find
information on a site or carry out a transaction - overlaps in many
areas with that of accessibility - the ease with which people with
different needs or using special access devices can gain access to the
information on your site.

"Often accessibility is viewed as totally divorced from usability, but
actually how you present information is just as important for
accessibility as merely being able to get at it. Even if a web site is
accessible according to the various technical standards, and for
example is able to be read aloud by a screen reader, if there are
endless
lists of menu options usability will be heavily impaired."

Both usability and accessibility are assessed in the same way, by
testing against real human needs, he says. And both cover not only use
by people with disabilities, but also people with different levels of
education or computer skills, he said.

Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/jakob) is principal of the user-centred
design consultancy Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g -
http://www.nngroup.com) which he co-founded with Donald Norman,
former vice president of research at Apple Computer. Before that he
was a senior engineer with Sun Microsystems, helping the company
establish its first web services.

NN/g has carried out extensive testing of government sites in the US
and Australia, and Nielsen says that his own informal reviews of public
service sites in other countries including the UK has shown that the
lessons to be learned are universal.

"Government sites are very patchy. You come across a few good ones
from time to time, but they are not nearly as good as they should be,"
he says. "They are usually among the lowest scorers in our usability
tests."

The most common failing for public sector sites is that they are
focused too closely on their own internal departmental structures and
initiatives, or their current work programmes, and not on what
information the user is actually likely to be seeking, Nielsen says.

"This shows a bureaucratic way of thinking. You see it a little bit on
company sites, but it is predominant on government sites."

He said government agencies may find it hard to see the need to spend
money on boosting usability, as they do not make the same 'return on
investment' judgments as companies. "But the fact is that better
usability leads to increased satisfaction for the citizen, which to me
is
the reason we have government in the first place."

In fact, government agencies have even more need to consider usability
than companies, he said. "For commercial sites, you can make a trade-
off and decide to reach a few customers where you can make the most
money. But for government you can't say that, you can't decide to only
serve a part of the population."

Nielsen's company is one of the pioneers of controlled user testing of
web sites, which he argues is the only way to properly gauge a site's
usability. A group of ordinary users are observed attempting to perform
tasks on the web, such as find a tax form or a bus route. "It's so
common that people can't find what they are looking for - it's tragic.
And the government agencies that call us in are the ones who are
bothered about usability. The average agency won't bother looking at it
at all."

Nielsen says one example of a US government site that is highly usable
is 'Ready.gov' (http://www.ready.gov), the Department of Homeland
Security's site with public information about how to prepare for and
respond to various forms of terrorist attack.

"The site explains what to do in clear and simple terms. But it is a
new
project, so it was easier to build in usability."

In the US, the requirement for accessibility standards to be built into
all
government technology contracts set out in section 508 of the
Rehabilitation Act (http://www.section508.gov) had increased
awareness of the issues, he said. But progress is slow, since it mainly
affected new projects. "Section 508 boosted interest in accessibility,
but in practice not many sites have been affected. The major
departments have spent a very long time implementing it."

As for the precise costs of making a web site more usable and
accessible, Nielsen said that it was possible to spend a lot of money,
and it was right for large organisations with public-facing sites such
as
the NHS to do so, but it was also possible to make at least some
progress for a small outlay.

"There is no such thing as the perfect user interface, a site that is
equally usable by everybody. And it would be very expensive to come
close to such a site. But people should not think that there is a
binary
choice between a horrible web site and a perfect one. No matter what
the budget, you can always take a site and make improvements. Within
three days you can do some testing and draw up a list of the top ten
things you need to do to improve usability. You should attack the
biggest stumbling blocks first."

[BIG snip]

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##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
##########################################################
"A word to the wise is sufficient. For others, use more."
"Un mot suffit aux sages; pour les autres, il en faut plus."
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