Notes from Bristol Usability Group talk by Andrew Arch

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I don't know whether it's just coincidence, but since I've been working in Bristol, there seem to have been quite a high proportion of geek events happening locally, which as well as being interesting, have given me the opportunity to meet some local folk. Last night was the turn of the Bristol Usability Group, which I was completely unaware of until Joe and Laura (separately) told me about it via twitter, correctly thinking that it'd be right up my street.

It was.

Last night's topic was Designing for Old(er) People and Andrew Arch, Web Accessibility and Ageing Specialist for the Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation Project (WAI-AGE) was presenting.

I've known Andrew for a few years now, since he worked for Vision Australia doing similar stuff to what we did at RNIB, and hadn't had a chance to speak to him in a long time, so quite apart from hearing his presentation, it was really good to get a chance to catch up with him. Especially since he was at the Standards.Next event I was at on Saturday but I didn't get a chance to talk to him then.

I took quite a few notes during Andrew's talk, because he gave a lot of information that I wasn't aware of, including lots of useful and interesting statistics, and assuming I can read my handwriting (not an absolute certainty, and the longer I get from having written them, the less likely it gets) I thought I'd transcribe (and share) what I wrote down.

It was an information packed presentation (and discussion afterwards) and I couldn't physically write any faster and so I know I missed some stuff, so any errors or omissions are mine alone.

Aging facts and figures

According to the UN, by 2050, more than 20% of the world's population will be over 60, however, some countries (such as Japan) have populations which are aging faster than others.

In the EU, it's estimated that by 2010 17% of the population will be over 65 and 5% will be over 80 years of age. By 2050 that number will rise to 29% over 65 and 12% over 80, which is a significant increase.

Age-related impairments

Audio

As we age, our hearing becomes less sensitive and we lose the ability to hear high pitched sounds and distinguish specific sounds if there is a lot of background noise.

Andrew gave figures of 47% of people aged 61-80 having some hearing loss which rose to 93% in users older than 81.

Vision

Perhaps the most obvious impairment as a result of aging. As we age we are less able to focus on near tasks, our colour perception and sensitivity decreases, as does our perception of contrast.

Most interesting to me was the prevalence non-correctable vision loss (that is, can't be corrected by wearing glasses or contact lenses). In people aged 65-74 the figure was 16%, rising to 19% of people aged 75-84 and 46% of over 85s.

Mobility

Quite apart from conditions such as Arthritis, as we age we lose some fine motor control, which makes it difficult to, for example, write or use a mouse easily.

Approximately 50% of the population over 65 have Arthritis and 20% have what's known as "Essential Tremor" (slight shaking, but not as serious as Parkinson's) compared to 4% of people over 85 having Parkinson's (a figure I thought would be higher).

Cognitive

As we age, we lose some of our short-term memory and concentration, as well as suffering from information overload and becoming easily distracted (although some would argue that that's already happening in younger generations due to things like twitter and facebook, but I digress… )

As far as conditions go, (only) 1.4% of people aged 65-59 have been diagnosed with Dementia, rising to 24% of people over 85. However 20% of people over 70 are considered to have a "Mild Cognitive Impairment" (memory loss, etc.).

Multiple Impairments

Although it'd be nice to only have one thing go downhill as we age, unfortunately, aging tends to have a cumulative effect and older people often have multiple impairments, although it's clear that most don't consider themselves to be "disabled" (and nor should they).

Opportunities

Being online opens up many opportunities to older people (and everyone, really), such as:

  • social interaction and communication
  • access to information
  • e-commerce (although older people are more cautious about security issues)
  • access and/or participation in civic activities
  • training
  • employment, research and workplace opportunities

Demographic percentages

In 2006, the percentage of people online among the different age groups were:

16-24: 83% 25-44: 79% 45-54: 68% 55-64: 52% 65+: 15%

In 2008, those figures had changed to the following:

16-24: 93% 25-44: 87% 45-54: 78% 55-64: 63% 65+: 26%

These figures came from the Office of National Statistics, and counted people who said they'd been online in the last three months as "being online".

Getting online

Owning a computer lowers the barrier to getting online (as opposed to using a shared machine or going to a library), but there does seem to be an increased fear of "breaking" it (where it might be the computer, the internet or the entire world).

That said, there seems to be a snowball effect where older users encourage each other to use computers and/or get online. Age Concern also offer training for computer skills training for older people.

The needs of older users

There's a big overlap with the needs identified and catered for by the WCAG guidelines, but studies done seem to have been done by people who didn't have much awareness of WCAG and haven't built on previous work done.

Some things to take into account when thinking about the needs of older users:

  • They consider themselves old (not disabled)
  • They don't want to appear different (so might not change settings or use assistive devices.
  • It can be difficult to implement coping strategies (because of the reason above, or because of lack of recall)
  • They may not be aware that the options are there (because they've been taught to use their computer by younger people who don't know the options are there either because they don't need them)
  • Access technology can be (is) difficult to use

Guidelines for designing for older people

In no particular order:

  • Ensure text is readable by choosing a decent font size (my recommendation: no less than 75% of default (or 12px)), ensuring good colour contrast and choosing appropriate colours (apparently flourescent colours appear blurry to older users)
  • Make sure links are easy to identify and behave predictably
  • Have clear and identifiable headings
  • Make it easy for users to orient themselves within the site
  • Provide clear and consistent navigation, and include breadcrumbs, search and a home button
  • Be consistent with layout
  • Avoid information overload
  • Avoid italics and underline (because it makes text more difficult to read)
  • Left justify text (rather than right or full)
  • Increase line spacing and margins
  • Simplify forms, provide clear guidance and error messages and make it easy for users to correct errors (as an interesting point, apparently the now conventional red asterisk is all but invisible to older users, so the recommendation is to use the word (required) instead)

WCAG2.0 and Older People

Andrew recommends looking beyond the sufficient techniques to the advisory techniques for WCAG guidelines, as many of these techniques are more usability focused than pure technical accessibility and may be of particular benefit to older users.

WAI-AGE Project Ongoing Work

  • Educational resources for industry (designers, developers, etc.)
  • Educational resources for users
  • Pursuing standards harmonisation (between Silver Surfer guidelines and WCAG, etc.)
  • Encouraging participation by older users in standards development

Interesting Points from the Group Discussion

There was a really interesting discussion after Andrew had finished his presentation, with several attendees sharing experiences they'd had of testing with older users (or grandparents).

Tips for Testing with Older Users

  • Individuals may find it awkward to do their thinking out loud and/or feel embarrassed about their ability (or lack thereof), but observing a group of users can bring valuable feedback as they'll help each other and talk amongst themselves
  • Be prepared to achieve less in more time than you think - older people often talk more and are more likely to read every word of the site before attempting a task
  • Be aware that concentration levels will drop off more quickly than with younger users
  • It might be more difficult to recruit and retain older participants for multiple test sessions across lengthy projects because "I might not be here" (now there's a cheerful thought)

Collected notes and observations

A site that was redesigned to suit the needs of older users was tested with younger users and when given the choice, the younger users preferred it.

A lot of older users have laptops, and as a result have more experience (and are therefore more comfortable) using a trackpad rather than a mouse.

Buying or owning a laptop increased the likelihood of frequent useage (more portable, easier to use from the sofa, easier to show stuff to other people, etc.).

Older people will join social networks like facebook to keep tabs on their younger relatives, but tend to watch rather than interact.

Older men seemed to use the internet less than women (possible connection to it being women who tend to communicate more than men?).

It was more difficult to recruit male participants for user testing.

I have more notes, but they're less than coherent in the light of day (err, night now) and that's probably more than enough to be getting on with.

Setting up local Subversion for use with Coda and MAMP

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I spent most of last year using Subversion via command line at the request of the client I was working with at the time. Because I'm geeky in a different way to those who are comfortable in commandlineville, it was all set up for me, and all I had to cope with were the commands to check out, check in, and occasionally, resolve a conflict.

In time, I got reasonably comfortable with those commands but I had no real idea how to go about setting up Subversion (or any other version control system) for myself, and haven't had or felt the need to do so until now.

I had hoped that I'd be able to find an easy to follow tutorial online, but either my googlefu has failed me, or it doesn't exist. What I did find were several tutorials that assume that you're comfortable with the command line or that you know how subversion works and what to do, and that isn't me, so I figured I'd set out what I did, in the hope that it might be helpful to a) someone else and b) me, when I come to do this again and realise I've completely forgotten what I did.

Disclaimer: This may not be the absolute best way to go about this, but it's what I did and it works. If there are better ways to do any of these steps, I'd love to know, so please leave a comment.

Step 1: Setting up Subversion

Follow the first part of the instructions handily provided at Ruby Robot's Subversion With Mac OS X Tutorial but stop when you get to "Creating a Sample Subversion Project".

Step 2: Create a Repository

In a fresh Terminal window, I changed directory to my MAMP directory htdocs folder by typing cd [path/to/htdocs] where in my case it was cd ../../../Applications/MAMP/htdocs (because MAMP installs to the Applications folder and I don't know how to/if you can move it without breaking it.

I then created the repository by using the command from the tutorial:

svnadmin create SVNrep

This created a SVNrep directory in my htdocs folder.

You could put the SVNrep directory wherever you like - I just wanted it close to my other working files.

Step 3: Set up a username and password

Use finder to go to the SVNrep directory, and find the conf directory. It will contain three files:

authz passwd svnserve.conf

Open svnserve.conf in whatever text editor you're comfortable with and uncomment line 20 (delete the # and space) to use the default password file. Save it and close it.

Open the passwd file and add a username and password by typing:

username = password

on a new line at the bottom of the file. Save it and close it.

Step 4: Add files to the repository

To add the site I wanted to be version controlled to the repository, I typed the following into Terminal:

svn import [sitedirectory] file:///[path to SVNrep directory]/[sitename for respository] -m "Initial import"

Then held my breath and hit return.

Step 5: Check out the files so you can work with them

Because I'm a version control moron, I thought I could check out the files to the directory I'd imported them from and they'd be version controlled, but you can't, so I used the following command to check them out to a different directory.

svn checkout file://[path to SVNrep dir/sitename from previous step] [newfolder]

Then held my breath and pressed return again.

Step 6: Set up new site in Coda

If you're setting up a new site once you've done all the previous steps and you choose the [newfolder] you set up in the previous step, it should detect that it's version controlled and the details should appear in the Source Control panel at the bottom of the new site dialog.

If this doesn't happen automatically, put the full path to your repository (the bit immediately after checkout in the previous step) in the Repository URL field.

It also works if you put the localhost url in (e.g., http://localhost:8888/[checkout folder]).

Then enter the username and password you created in Step 3.

Step 7: Test that it all works

Open your new site in Coda, find a file, open it and edit it.

When you save it, an M icon should appear next to the file name. Click this and a dialog should open up asking you to type a comment.

Type a comment, and hit commit.

Step 8: Work with your newly version controlled site

With help from O'Reilly's Version Control with Subversion free ebook if you need it.

Afterword

Obviously, having spent ages writing all this up, I did a quick google for coda subversion guide to see if there were any good tutorials for subversion commands within Coda and found what I wish I'd found to begin with:

A designer’s guide to installing a local copy of Subversion for use with Coda

Typical, eh?

Still, I've done all this now so I'll publish and be damned (or roundly mocked as a moron).

Designing Accessibility Into Themes

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I was delighted last month to spend a couple of days with Leisa Reichelt and Mark Boulton looking at the work they're doing for the d7ux project from an accessibility point of view. During that couple of days, we got to talking about how to make it easier for people who make Drupal themes to make them accessible, and we came up with the idea of writing a kind of hints and tips document that could be viewed online or downloaded and printed.

The resulting document - Designing Accessibility Into Themes - is now available from d7ux.org and I've been overwhelmed by the positive response it's received on twitter so far. I'm even more pleased that it's in the queue to be included in the Drupal Handbook.

It's not an exhaustive guide to everything you should do to make a website accessible, because that would take many, many more words, but I hope it strikes the right balance of information, pragmatism and tone and gives a good overview of the main things to keep in mind if you're designing a theme for any kind of content management system - not just Drupal.

If you've got any feedback on it, I'd love to hear it, and please feel free to pass it on to anyone who you think might find it useful.

Thought-provoking posts on Accessibility

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There have been several really thought-provoking posts about accessibility made over the last week or so, and while I'm marshalling my thoughts (and the several thousand words I've written in response) into something coherent, I thought it'd be worth linking to them. Accessibility to the Face from Northtemple

Here’s my point–if your brother or sister had a disability, you would give a crap. But you don’t have to have a sibling in a wheelchair to genuinely care, even if it’s only in your work.

Empathy is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We have an ability to imagine things the way that others see them and how it makes them feel. We don’t even have to have a disability ourselves.

And from my perspective, accessibility is about giving a crap.

Accessibility is NOT a checklist.

Accessibility is about usability.

Accessibility is a paradigm shift.

Accessibility is a personal issue.

If you read none of the other links in this post, read this.

Commentary on Sign Language and Accessibility from The Deaf Perspective

Quid pro quo. The loose translation for the Latin expression is “you give me something, I give you something.” We give the world accessibility to our community, our language, and our unique perspective. In return, everybody understands more why accessibility is so important for everybody.

When is the Right Time for Accessibility from Derek's Box of Chocolates

Is it possible to include accessibility support “too early?” I’m not saying it should be an add-on at the end of the process/project/product development cycle, but I’m very seriously wondering what the optimal time for integrating an actual accessibility implementation is? Is it enough to keep accessibility architecture in mind from the beginning, but not implement right away? Should we get the basics right first, and then build in accessibility support based on that previously envisioned architecture after we know we have a viable product? We continue to say that accessibility should happen throughout rather than just at the end, but would it actually be better if we left it out, just for a little while, at the beginning?

Is Web Accessibility a Human Rights Issue? by Wendy Chisholm

It’s important for us to recognize each other’s concerns. On the one hand we have technologists who want to create things to help make the world better–help people communicate more richly and quickly, to create technologies for self-expression and commerce. Rock on. We want you to innovate because you’re changing the world. On the other hand we have people who want to use the technologies and to participate in society. When the technologists say, “Don’t make me think about accessibility, I want to be innovative.” The response from people with disabilities can be hostile because the message from the technologists is, “I do not value you enough to include you in my innovation.”

TIFI: 19-25 March

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Some of the things I found interesting between the 19 and 25 March. Sadly, having roughly 100 tabs open between two windows in Firefox tends to quite seriously bork things, and I lost more than half the tabs I had open. Which, if nothing else, is a reminder that I should clean out the tabs more often. But anyway, on to the good stuff.

TIFI: 18 March 2009

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  • Fifty People, One Question. Great concept, beautifully shot videos and a gorgeous site to boot. Love these. My favourite is probably the London one (above). The answer given by the guy seen in the still is a heartbreaker.
  • Crush + Lovely. The people who did the Fifty People, One Question website. Stunningly gorgeous site. Very inspirational.
  • The Big Picture. I love this site and wish I'd been at the SXSW panel. It's my favourite example of accidental accessibility, and I really should write more about why (note to self).
  • Authonomy. Books and block printed lettering. Heaven.
  • Sexy Web Design by Elliot Jay Stocks. From what I've read so far, this is a great book. I downloaded the sample chapters, then had to buy the book. It's gone straight to the top of the reading pile.
  • UI Pattern Factory. Great resource (via the Sexy Web Design book).
  • Elliot's Inspiration Collection.
  • Chris Messina's Design Pattern Collection.
  • Talking about Design on Huffduffer. Great collection of audio files tagged with Design. I would totally Huffduff stuff if I ever found any audio files while browsing around the web.
  • Unofficial Landmark Trust Search Page. Matthew Somerville does it again. I'll definitely be using this to book my next Landmark holiday (and there will definitely be a next, and a one after that, and so on - staying in a Landmark is just the most amazing experience).
  • André Da Loba. I particularly love the shoes in the middle of the maze.

TIFI: 16 March 2009

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Glorious

TIFI: 12-15 March 2009

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Things I found interesting between the 12th and 15th of March 2009.

TIFI: 11 March 2009

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Spring Blossom

  • Spring has arrived in my wee corner of SE22, and very welcome it is too.
  • Natalie Downe's slides on practical, maintainable CSS. I wish I'd been able to be there for the actual presentation.
  • The Fluid Grid system. I remain unconvinced that fluid is the way to go for all sites, but for those where it is appropriate, this could come in really handy.
  • Designers are not programmers.
  • Need a napkin? I know I do.
  • Birds on a wire. Beautiful.
  • Hampus Jageland. He's got some great stuff in his portfolio. I particularly like the branding work for Reading is Fundamental. It's modern and minimalist, but it's got a kind of classic, Penguin-esque feel to it.
  • Yerba Mate tea. Haven't tried this before, but I spotted some in my favourite wee deli when I went out for a wander earlier and thought I'd give it a try. It's apparently some kind of miracle tea. So far, all I can say is that it's a bit of an acquired taste (and colour), but it's not unpleasant.
  • Spring 2009 Knitty is up!
  • The Yarn Harlot on brit TV. Stephanie (who is in Canada) spoke to Greg Kinnear (the actor) while he was on the Graham Norton show (in the UK). Confused? It's a long story, but a very funny one. The links are there for following.
  • Happy Cog are working on Redesigning Mozilla and doing the whole Design by Community thing. Hope it doesn't wind up looking more like a camel than a horse.