2 April 2008
Studio Session: Accessibility and Usability
Today you'll work through a series of exercises designed to help you be better attuned to usability and accessibility issues for your websites.
Bring headphones to the lab!
Assessing Accessibility: Studio Exercise
Use Cynthia Says to evaluate at least two of your own web pages (with at least one of those being on an RIT server). If the server is refuses to accept any more URLs from rit.edu, review a page that you visit frequently. Make note of all of the priority 1, 2, and 3 problems identified.
If you reviewed your own web page, fix the Priority 1 problems. Remember that to pass the W3C recommendations, you must not have any Priority 1 problems. (You may find it helpful to use the WCAG checklist.)
After you've fixed your Priority 1 problems, look at the other comments in the report provided. Your efforts should now be directed towards fixing any Priority 2 problems. Finally, Priority 3 problems may also be fixed to provide maximum accommodations.
Post an entry to your blog (blogs.it.rit.edu/mt/mt.cgi) that describes what problems you found on your site. Which problems were you able to fix? Were there any you couldn't? (If you weren't able to test your site in class, do this before Saturday.)
Accessibility Simulations: Studio Exercise
If you have headphones with you, complete the tasks on WebAIM's Screen Simulator. If you don't have headphones, do this exercise outside of class; it's a valuable experience.
Go to the Cognitive Simulator on the same site, and complete those tasks as well.
On the Vischeck site, provide a URL to a web page you've created, and see how it would appear to a person with color blindness. Try it with some of the web pages you frequent most often.
When you're done, post an entry to your blog describing the experience.
Studio Exercise: Usability
Try the following activities, and assess the usability of the web sites you're working with. Was it obvious where to click? Could you tell where you were in the site? Was it confusing or clear?
1) As you know, all RIT faculty, staff, and students now have a University ID that replaces their social security number for all non-salary transactions. How can you find your University ID? Where did you go to find this information? How long did it take you?
2) How many concentration areas are available to BS in IT students?
3) What's the first day of classes at RIT for winter quarter 2007-2008?
