Jakob Nielsen: Web Site Usability and Accessibility for NPOs

Author, speaker, and evangelist Jakob Nielsen is considered by some the first and last word in fluid and succinct Web design. A proponent of a smooth user experience, he has spoken around the globe to designers, Web marketers, site planners, and educators. His findings on user testing are quoted throughout the Web industry, and although his opinions have occasionally been controversial, they are rarely ignored.

Nielsen and his organization, the Nielsen Norman Group , often deal with corporate clients, but he has important advice for nonprofit organizations. In fact, he is the current national chair of the Accessibility Internet Rallies (AIR), which aim to improve Web accessibility for people with disabilities.

In 2001, the Nielsen Norman Group conducted the survey Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities. He found that of the 104 people tested -- some reliant on screen readers or screen magnifiers, and a control group of people who didn’t need either -- the control group was three times as likely to be successful in completing simple tasks online, such as finding bus route information or purchasing a CD. The control group also managed to complete these tasks in roughly half the time of their accessibility technology-using counterparts.

These findings are alarming, certainly, and should be considered during the design of every new site. Nielsen recently spoke to TechSoup about site accessibility, usability, and how nonprofits can make the most of their Web resources.

TechSoup: Accessibility Internet Rallies How is site accessibility especially important for the nonprofit sector?

Jakob Nielsen: It depends on the nonprofit. Many of them reach out to underserved people (for example, elderly people)who have a lot of accessibly issues, or to an audience of users with disabilities. If this is its community, then accessibility is definitely more important for a nonprofit than for a commercial Web site. Also, if it's serving low-income populations, there can be functional impairments to the Web site that aren’t [related to] the person, but [are related to] their equipment, such as a slow computer or slow dial-up access. In that case, the user experience might include a small screen or bad resolution. Either way, the result is quite the same, and that's of course what matters.

TS: What are the risks involved for nonprofits that have inaccessible sites?

JN: The first risk is that they eliminate the people they could otherwise have served. The secondary risk has more to do with the organization’s reputation and how they’re perceived in the community. I always emphasize that people with disabilities are people; they have friends and family and they talk to them. If they're treated poorly by your organization, they will let people know. A large number of people will hear about it. With an inaccessible site, you're cutting off those people, and you have a reputation of being uncaring and discriminating. Most nonprofits don't want that associated with their name.

TS: How about the legal requirements for an accessible site? Should nonprofits be concerned?

JN: If an organization receives federal funding, there are other issues involved (such as Section 508 of the Disabilities Act). However, making your site open to everyone shouldn't be just because you can get into trouble with regulations around the globe. It's discrimination. You should do it because you shouldn’t discriminate, not because there's a law to do so. As it stands now, the law is insufficient. It strives to ensure accessibility, but laws don't ensure that the user will have an easy time using the Web site.

Rather than just fulfilling technical requirements, you must consider if [users] can not only get in, but whether or not they can actually use and benefit from the site. Whether the site is "possible" to use or "easy" to use are two very different ideas. A large number of sites that are theoretically accessible, meaning that the ALT tags are labeled and such, a screen reader can't make any sense of. It’s not just about Section 508 that says you have to do this, because ironically, there's no regulation that says it has to make sense. Nonprofits have got to look at this information and ask, "Does it make sense?"

TS: Tell us about your study. What did you find?

JN: In our study for visually impaired users, the sites we tested with this audience were three times less usable. They were all sites that were possible to use by accessibility standards, but they still had problems like tiny text and mouse accuracy. So while they were possible to use, they weren’t easy to use. Real accessibility [goes] beyond just the ability to get into the site, but [includes] the ability to get into the site and complete a task. In our study, users felt very far from it being a pleasant experience.

Also, people often ignore seniors in their site design, even though many [seniors] are perfectly capable of using computers in the social sense, and they stand to reap the greatest benefits. [See the report Web Usability for Senior Citizens .] They use the Web for hobbies, e-commerce, services, medical and health info -- technology that is intended for older people. Older users aren’t disabled in the strictest sense of the word, but as we age we get slower, weaker eyesight, less precise hand movements, and share with users with disabilities many of the same factors that contribute to the problems in [Web] design. And as the population ages and computers get cheaper, there are more elderly users to come.

TS: In your study, two of the 19 sites your users tested were nonprofits (The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Lake Yamanka in Japan). What were some of the recurring problems on these nonprofit sites?

JN: They are very different sites. The rock and roll site had succumbed to that feeling of cool in the music industry, adding more bells and whistles to the site that limited its accessibility quite a bit. It’s really too bad because a lot of blind users have an interest in music. The same concern with "cool" is often true on the commercial side of things; users had the same problem shopping for CD's on the e-commerce site.

The Japanese lake site was more of a "normal" nonprofit site, more toned down and easier to get into. The lake site had a problem with its Japanese character set. Of the three Japanese alphabets, you had to be a sighted user to know which one you were typing in. They relied on people being able to see what they were doing. Luckily, we only have one character set in English, so this isn’t a problem here.

TS: What did you find nonprofit sites did best?

JN: In general, one of the benefits nonprofits have is a lower budget. Oddly enough, this is a good thing that keeps them from some of the excesses of Web design (such as rich graphics and multimedia). Not only does this help all users, but these sorts of bells and whistles are often very bad for users with disabilities.

The number one guideline we offer is simplicity. The more you can keep it simple, the more you help people with disabilities, seniors, and all users. Reduce the number of choices, abandon the fancy interface, and get back to basics. Emphasize your organization’s core competencies. Don't put too much stuff up. Every extra thing on a Web site that's a small problem is a showstopper when you add the impairment issue.

Also, nonprofits are more willing to speak to people on their own terms in order to meet their needs. As compared to corporate sites that are marketing-oriented, nonprofits are more down-to-earth, and they’re cleaner in what they have to say. Marketing sites force the user to read through the gloss. That’s another barrier, and it hurts you more if you have an impairment. That sort of site is made even more insufferable if you have to have it read aloud.

TS: What do you say to organizations that feel they lack the savvy or the resources to meet accessibility guidelines? How would you advise them to take their next steps?

JN: What ought to be done, though not necessarily the first step, is that they should run a small usability study with seniors or people with low vision so that they can see how their Web site is used by these groups. [See the report How to Conduct Usability Evaluations for Accessibility .]

Failing that, they should buy something like IBM Homepage Reader, an inexpensive browser for blind users, and then browse the Web site on their own to see how it sounds. However, this is not as good as finding a real user, because if you’re the person who developed the site or if you’re on the inside of an organization, you know the Web site well. An outside user gives a more realistic interpretation. And a blind person is used to listening to a site, but a sighted person will just turn off their monitor for the testing, rendering them more disabled than a real disabled user would be.

I would not recommend testing with a text browser like Lynx, because accessibility isn’t about text versus images, it’s about text versus audio. Scanning is the mode for the sighted user, and listening is the mode for the unsighted. People really need to listen to their Web sites. After you listen, you'll hear where it’s awkward, and then you do the redesign.

In an ideal world, the organization would then go and fix everything. In a more practical world, a small organization will have to prioritize, because it’s unlikely they will have the resources to fix everything at once. Prioritize based on traffic data or popularity, unless of course you have a special section that serves seniors or people with disabilities. If so, then fix that first.

The best thing a nonprofit can walk away with is that from now on, [it] won't make that same design mistake again. Accessibility isn't expensive if you remember it before you do the design. It will always be more expensive to retrofit pages afterward.