Quality of UK Cultural Websites: evaluation Kate Fernie ICT Adviser (EU projects) MLA
MLA The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council is the national development agency working for and on behalf of museums, libraries and archives • provides strategic leadership • acts an advocate • develops capacity and • promotes innovation and change
Quality principles for cultural websites Celebrating European cultural diversity by providing access to digital cultural content for all Transparent – Effective – Maintained – Accessible - Usercentred – Responsive - Multi-linguality – interoperable – managed - preserved
User centered People are not “disabled” they are disabled from using websites A usable website is one that can be used to a desired level of ease of use
Disabled People and the Web: Web Accessibility in the Cultural Sector Web audit commissioned by MLA from City University: – – – 100 Museum websites 100 Library websites 100 Archive websites Additionally: 25 International museum websites Automated testing + user testing Centre for HCI Design
Automated testing 325 homepages tested: • Against W 3 C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines http: //www. w 3. org/WAI • Using Web. XM http: //www. watchfire. com
Automated testing: findings • 42% of MLA websites tested passed priority 1 (level A) automated checks • 3% passed priority 2 (level AA) …by 2005 all public sector websites need to be accessible to disabled people to Level AA
Automated testing: findings One homepage passed Priority 1, 2 and 3 (Level AAA) automated checks • BUT page flagged 32 manual warnings
Checks and warnings 1. 1 Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element (alt) Automated checks : HTML code (image) Manual checks : ensure description is appropriate and helpful
Accessible? • The average cultural website homepage presents disabled users with over 40 automated and manual violations and • 215. 9 potential instances of violations
User testing of 25 UK and international websites by a user panel of: • Disabled people including people who are blind, partially sited or dyslexic • Accessibility experts from City University
User testing • Each user looked at 4 websites • 2 representative tasks per website: – What time does the museum/library/archive open on a Monday? – What facilities does the museum/library/ archive provide for disabled visitors? • Using assistive technologies • Success rates, problems, ease of use…
User testing: findings • 189 accessibility incidents uncovered • 22% not identified by automated testing Key problems: 1. Orientation and navigation problems 2. Issues related to presentation of content 3. Alternative descriptions of images and other media
User testing: findings • 56% of user panel members felt ‘lost’ when exploring the websites – Poorly named links that lead to unexpected content – Inconsistent means of navigating around the site (links, navigation bars, images as active links, icons…) User centered?
Website with problems…
User testing: findings • Blind, partially sighted and dyslexic users failed 24% of the tasks they were asked to do: – Blind users failed 33% of tasks – Archive web sites produced more task failures – Archive web sites performed better in the automated tests Effective?
Website audit: conclusions • Cultural institutions need to improve their website accessibility (in UK and overseas) • BUT the results of this audit are BETTER than a survey of 1000 UK public websites by the Disability Rights Commission • Those websites that followed NOF technical guidelines would have performed better
Recommendations • Accessibility should be integral • Cultural institutions should develop policies, plans and targets to improve – Involve disabled people in design and testing – Make online collections accessible to specific groups of disabled people • It is important to promote good practice and develop guidance
Jodi Mattes Access Award http: //www. nmm. ac. uk/
Find out more Full web accessibility audit report available from April 12 th 2004: http: //www. mla. gov. uk/action/learnacc/00 access_03. asp kate. fernie@mla. gov. uk
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