Case Study - Ford For All! Embracing Diversity in Design

A few weeks ago I was asked by a colleague to look into diversity issues on a number of our client's UK recruitment Websites. These issues had been brought to the forefront by the intervention of an independent expert (Mike Brading of Insite International), who pointed out that some of the sites concerned would be virtually unusable for people with impaired vision.

I am pleased to report that three of our clients, Land Rover, Aston Martin and Jaguar (all part of the Ford Motor Company -- FMC), have decided, quite rightly, to take this very seriously indeed. In fact, they're going further than just the visually impaired, to embrace accessibility as a whole -- people with impaired motion, dyslexia, colour blindness, and much more. As one of the members of the Land Rover HR team put it:

My first task was to look at the three sites and analyse their current state in terms of accessibility -- and believe me, it was an eye-opener (if you'll excuse the pun). I don't consider any of these sites to be particularly bad, in so far as I can navigate them ok, the designs don't offend me and they are competently programmed. But putting myself in the shoes of an Internet user with a disability made me seriously scrutinise my own methods of assessment. In many ways, this little task was the most beneficial thing that's happened to me for a good long while.

So What's Wrong?

Obviously, we in professional Web development do our utmost to make our sites as accessible as possible. We don't want people to get annoyed and frustrated using our sites. We consider a whole host of connection speeds. If we use Flash we offer no-Flash alternatives. If we serve video we generally include a transcript as well in case our user can't view the movie.

But when was the last time you sat back and wondered how a visually impaired person's screen reading software would handle that Flash navigation of yours? Frankly, it won't unless you use Macromedia's new Flash MX -- and implement its accessibility options properly (see Accessibility and Macromedia Flash MX movie). And what about those lovely mouse-over effects into which you've incorporated sound bites? No good if your user is deaf. And equally useless if they have mobility problems and are restricted to using a specially designed keyboard -- they probably don't even have a pointing device.

We Don't Think

That's the problem. We really don't think. I can appreciate this too. As someone who has lived with reasonably serious arthritis for the last ten years, I know only too well the frustrations. A simple can of deodorant on a bad morning can reduce me to a flurry of obscenities and put me in a foul temper for the rest of the day, because I just can't press the damned button. There's nothing more annoying than being unable to operate a normal household object. Of course, the person who designed the deodorant dispenser can use it fine. And so can the person who tested it ... and most of the people that use it. But that doesn't do me any good.

I was reading an article in the November 2001 edition of Ability, a free monthly publication for disabled computer users written by one of AbilityNet's senior consultants, Bill Fine. It's a transcript of Bill and a visually impaired colleague, Robin, attempting to use two online shopping sites. At one point in the transcript Robin vents her irritation, saying:

And just to highlight the sort of problems Robin was having, here is a sound clip of the current Land Rover careers Website in MP3 format. Now go and look at the site, www.landrovercareers.com. As you can tell, in its current state there's little chance of visually impaired users being able to successfully navigate this site. And, assuming they manage to get off of the front page, things don't get much better. The site is set to read the navigation first, which takes quite a while, and is formatted in such a way that when it's read out by an audio browser, it becomes little more than virtual gibberish. You soon find yourself drumming your fingers and praying for a quick end.

Granted, Robin's criticism is harsh, but probably not too far from the truth in some cases. How easy is it really to do a simple, text-only version of a site that you're working on? We all know it's a piece of cake! In my case I get the copy written for me by a writer. The tricky bit is creating all the mouse-overs and style sheets, the Flash elements and the JavaScript. It would take me about another half an hour to then go and copy and paste that text into a standard text-and-links site. It simply never occurred to me before.