Bryan Kingston

Week 3 Assignment:

Choose a public website from the list at http://www.gov.ie/en/sites/ and discuss how the site has addressed accessibility with regards to:

• Tools,
• Layout/ Structure,
• Design,

I have chosen the website http://www.statcentral.ie/ to discuss the accessibility issues.

The website http://www.statcentral.ie/ is a portal to the Central Statistics Office which provides information about statistics produced by the government departments and state organizations.

Tools:
With regards to tools that are used throughout http://www.statcentral.ie/, this website does take into account the consideration of people with disabilities who suffer from Deafness and Blindness, while they also try and make the website accessible to everyone who may suffer from Motor and Cognitative Disabilities. For Example, once I scrolled over the StatCentral icon located on the top left of the website it produced an ALT attribute or text box which included “Stat Central Logo” which would be called out from a screen reader for people who suffer from blindness. All of the content images used on this site include descriptive ALT attributes for disabled users. Visitors to this site using recent versions of screen readers can navigate using some of the following keystrokes including, *H to cycle forwards through the headings and *Shift + H to cycle backwards through the headings. The website also uses skip links, which allow people with screen readers to skip over the extensive menus.

ALT Attribute Example

 The above picture of the Stat Central Logo shows us an example of the ALT Attribute.

The layout of http://www.statcentral.ie/ is simple but effective. The website is designed for maximum accessibility. Frames are not used; tables are only used of keyboard shortcuts for all major links and special links to enable users to jump over navigation bars to the next item. The navigation on this site includes a consistent set of global navigation links. Many of the links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (e.g.: for instance the Headline of an article). Link text is never duplicated (e.g.: two links with the same link text always point to the same address) and there are no links that open new windows without warning. Also a sitemap and a search box is provided for easier navigation. This website was also tested by myself for Motor Disability suffers where i tested the website for navigation using only the tab, shift-tab and the return keys without the use of a mouse. Following some more exploration I found that it also provides “access keys” or shortcut for the users. For example, for Windows users, by typing ALT+3, the user will be redirected to the About Us webpage.    

Design:

Font sizes of the text throughout the site are specified using relative units of measurement. In practical terms this means that you can modify the size of the text using the “Text Size” option on the “View” dropdown menu from the Toolbar in Internet Explorer, or else using the Ctrl + or Ctrl – in other browsers such as Mozilla and Opera. The backround colour and the text colour is acceptable and clearly spaced apart. The text used in the website contains no jargon and is basic simple English which is clearly written and easy to read.  For people who suffer from colour blindness of the green and red type, (Deuteranope) like myself, i had no issue with this website and I am very grateful for it!! I have also tested this website on www.vischeck.com for the other forms of colour blindness; of which their was no issues to report. 

And finally i found a very interesting video on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2VVxrWun6A) which was broadcasted by the BBC, that goes into detail on people who suffer from bad sight or blindness and describes how the design, layout, structure and tools for web accessibility are important for them when using the internet.