vanderwal.net

Accessible persona

I was reminded today of Marcus a persona in Mark Pilgrim's Accessibility tutorial for Weblogs (and anybody else interested). Marcus is actually a real person (as pointed out by Mark), which drives the persona home. This may be my favorite example currently for accessibility.

At work we constantly get outside developers turning over non-accessible sites or applications. The client I work for is put through the painful task of explaining what needs to be done to meet Section 508 requirements. The teeth pulling the client goes through is shameful as the outside contractors want every single item spelled out and they want to know why (they usually have built the application or site through reusing a previous product built by somebody that is no longer there and that way they can do the job cheaply and make a better profit, had they built from the beginning knowing and understanding the requirements it would have been easy and inexpensive to do). Often times I am asked to help define what needs to be done and why something fails compliance, usually as a sanity check (accessibility has been an area of strength for four years or more). The regulations are very broad and do not define the exact actions that should be avoided (this is the correct approach to allow for technological improvements).

Marcus is a great example to have on the shelf as much of the information I work with during the day is public information that the taxpayers paid for, whether they are sighted, physically able, have their hearing, or not. We know that there is a decent number of users that come to government sites from publicly available systems (like in libraries) that have technology that is nowhere near current. These people should be able to get to the information and use the information and applications around it as others can use it. Marcus is usually what we see as worse case scenarios using Lynx, but also what we think of as our baseline. Knowing Marcus exists and is really helps greatly.

There is also a benefit side to building accessible information, it is future ready information. The information that is fully accessible is ready to use with no (or is rare cases slight) modification on mobile devices. This is the wonderful thing about building accessible information. One of the first steps is building information that validates to a standard. The next thing is separating style from the content by using style sheets, which make it easy to over ride any style that is problematic or to easily allow for scalable styles. This two helps create information that is future compatible. Accessible information can also be easily reused in from its presentation as it is built to standards that ease.

Accessible information is also structured properly. Structuring information properly is far more than how it looks, it is how is marked up. A header on a Web page has an "h1, h2, etc" tag around it, which eases the ability to build a table of contents or use that header as a contextual aid to summarize the information below it (that is if headers are tagged properly and the content in the header is properly descriptive). Structuring the information helps the information be reusable out of the Web page as that is what HTML does, provides structure elements in the markup tags. If information to be reused has needs (including structure and context that is easily discernible), which validating HTML provides as a basic foundation -- of course there is much that can be improved upon the basic HTML markup, but it addresses the information needs. Building accessible information applications (Web sites included) keeps money from being wasted in the future and it does not require buying a third-party application, which are often cause more problems than they solve where accessibility is concerned (this will not always be the case).

As Joe Clark's book, Building Accessible Websites points out accessible does not mean ugly or plain. Joe walks the reader through how to make beautiful sites that are also wonderfully to folks like Marcus (side note: Mark Pilgrim edited Joe's book). Another excellent book on accessibility, and is my favorite book on accessibility, as it works very well for Web application developers (and I agree with its approach to information in complex tables more than Joe's approach) is Accessible Web Sites. These are two great resources for leaning how to do things properly. I will be working on longer reviews of each in the near future.

Lou on Users Information Needs

Lou provides information on Information Needs Analysis, which is more accurately "User Information Needs Analysis". I noted this semantic problem on Lou's site, but other than that is it is a great viewpoint on discoving the mindset of the user's approach to a site based on the perception of information need. It is easy to surmise the power of vocabulary and taxonomy based on these overviews. Thanks Lou!!

IA and UX organization matrix

Beth provides a matix of IA and UX organizations to join, which helps not only know the price, but also know the area of focus.

Writers and information structure with markup

Understanding content, structure, writers, and working with content management in CMS Watch. Those of you like me that can not understand how people can not structure their documents that they want Web-endabled or reused in other way, this article helps make sense of the situation.

Design Council Gov Toolkit

The Design Council's Government [UK] Design Toolkit is a wonderful resource asking good questions and providing insite in to analytical tools to help shape a toward the mission and help design toward the users. The definition of cluster analysis does a nice job of laying out the task of defining groups of audiences. Other than this the site misses including the user as a focus of the messages and product.

Buttons have info cramming illness

This week I have dealt with folks that have created design elements without giving thought to how they or their users would use these elements. The oddity in the three cases was creating a design that used image buttons with text. The size of the button's was fixed with the design. In all three cases one or more of the buttons tried to cram way too much text on to the tiny space. The buttons were unreadable.

Graphical buttons demand forethought. They should only contain one or two short words. Graphical buttons should be clear and easy to read. If the words on buttons are more than one or two words you and the user may be better off using text links. A good button would be "Animals 2001" not "Emprical Study of Animals in Tropical and Non-Tropical Environments - 2001". To convey the full text of the information you may be much better off using headers to structure the information, in this case using "Animal Reports" and "Emprical Study of Tropical and Non-Tropical Environments" then list the years offered in buttons or in a list. This provides much better scanning and can help break the information in to more scanable chunks.

Wired goes X(HTML)

While trying to catch up on friends and knowledge I ran across Zeldman's discussion of Hot Wired moving fully to valid XHTML and CSS, which is a bold and wonderful move. Zeldman also points to Wired's defense of their move to the new up-to-date site. These are good reads and help us understand why good markup is important and to understand what goes into making these decisions and the work to make it come to life.

Markup gives structure to information

I have been missing a lot of things on the Web the past few weeks. I just found Steve Champeon's article on the importance of understanding mark-up over at Web Monkey. HTML markup, some call it HTML code (not correct), helps structure information so that it can be used and reused properly in the proper context. This is extremely important when you are trying to add style to the content, such as adding the desired size and weight to a header or modify positioning to an unordered list. I see a lot of HTML tags that are not used properly in the work we clean-up on a regular basis. There are very few applications, like MS Word that come close to using HTML markup properly. Cleaning up application generated markup is demoralizing as getting markup right in the first place is easier than having to clean up the mess made. Go read Steve's article and anything else you can put your hands on that he has written and you will be much better off than before, believe me.

Why is markup important? Many folks and applications try styling the information without considering the structure of the information. If you have much of a background in communication, journalism, information science, etc. you understand that information needs structure. There are headers that indicate to the user what the content and tone of the content that follows will contain. There are many elements on a page that need structure, like knowing where a paragraph begins and ends, where in the body of text an image should be tied, words that need to stand out (strong), a string of items in a list, or a structured ordered list with sub-elements. Not having thes information properly marked up would make understanding how to best treat that information very difficult. This may seem irrelevant to those that only deal with a Web browser, but if you want to read the informaiton on a PDA, print the information and use the best styling for reading, or need a screen reader to vocalize the words on the page and give the words that compise the information being communicated the same understanding you need structured information. It would be like trying to bake a cake with out sides on the pan, the cake needs structure to rise and be best consumed. People that guide you away from properly strucutring information, more often than not are not informed on the need and the benefits to structuring information.

Do not strand them

Stranding users is not a good thing to do, I think we can all agree with that premise. Not remembering that a user of your site can drop in to the site from anywhere to anywhere can be fatal. Take the U.S. Treasury Department, which recently did an expansive redesign of their site. They did a good job at bringing together much of their domain under one consistent branding roof. They have a few large navigation problems, they tend to pop-up a new window at the drop of a hat. Worse is that many of their press releases are built to pop-up, but have absolutely no navigation, not even to the Treasury homepage. I was suckered by this in July while searching for information from Google I was dropped in to a press release with nearly the exact information I was seeking. Big problem, all the Treasury Press Releases (sample of poor Treasury Web design) have no related links and no navigation to get you to the sourse of the page. When the Treasury gets around to fixing the stranded user problems they created they should fix the giant top banner/navigation bar that keeps the information their users are coming to the site for pushed down the page.

I will give the Treasury large kudos for grasping control of the splintered branding that is rampant in the large organizations. This consistantcy provides a couple of advantages by providing ease common design that give welcome consistancy and it makes it easier to go back and correct the navigation and usability errors that were left behind.

Accessibility tool that does what it needs to and more

Last week (things on the house and moving front along with work have kept me a little more than busy) I was demonstrated a solid accessibility application. The folks from Deque walked us through their Ramp product. Not only does this application assess accessibility of HTML (as well as image motions in improper frequency ranges) and Java, but it also will walk you through the steps to correct what needs to be done to meet and exceed 508 compliance. This tool handles complex HTML tables very well and offers a lot of functionality and very capably. This tool blows away Usablenet's Lift ability to easily add headers and ids to very complex tables (which Lift can mangle or just not hanle well). The tool also will markup perfectly valid HTML, which is a great relief. This tool is not cheap, but it will save a great amount of time, do things right, and give those using wanting the information the ablity to get it. This gives those of us that spend our waking hours trying to get usable and accessible information into the peoples hands who want it, can use it, and have paid for it (that is what taxes do after all).

Interactive Awards

Could it be information and site continuity is out and entertainment and design are in? CommArts Interactive 2002 Awards are nearly all beautiful graphical works, but have little or no continuity to the global sites in which they sit. The Advertising and Business awards sections seemed to be the most disconnected, as they had sites in which they sat that were quite different from where the award winners sat.

I really was impressed with the award winners from a graphical and entertaining perspective, but from the point of sharing and connecting to related information many of the winners were disjointed. Nearly all the winners were in Flash, which has information sharing problems for users. The Web is a wonderful information sharing medium that offers a wonderful ability to express, expand upon, and interact with users and other information stores. The Flash elements seemed to be self-contained, which is a serious downside. I will go back and spend more time trying to find examples of great design and using the Internet medium well.

The Internet is many things to many people and offers many options in which to present information. The wonderful thing about the Internet is being able to extract information as well as point others to specific segments of information with out having to wade through unrelated information. Hmmm, possibly more later on this.

Design for inconsistent medium

Rick Oppendisano has a wonderful discussion of Designing for An Inconsistent Medium in CommArts Design Interact. The Web browser is a wonderfully quirky design medium that provides great access to information, if marked-up properly. The browser does not give designer's free reign to control every pixel (a great developer will consider every pixel on a screen and weigh its purpose and use). The article does provide a great read.

Chad's reading lists

Chad Thornton has a great list of others reading lists. Such reading lists are great ways to find new resources. Chad adds Stanford's Joint Program in Design to his list.

Mobile info

It took $5.29 for 5 minutes on an internet kiosk to get to the right Vision.

Call it gadget issues or information problems, but I really needed access to info stored in an e-mail this evening. I was going to meet friends at a happy hour at Visions in DC. The problem was it was not Visions theater, but International Visions at 2629 Connecticuit, NW. I knew of Visions the cinema/bar/restaurant, but not the gallery. I checked the information in an e-mail before leaving and verified Visions on Connecticuit and went to the Visions just off Conn. I was wrong and did not print out the e-mail. I eventually found a Internet kiosk and paid $5.29 for a half hour to dig out the e-mail an figure out I am 10 blocks and a bridge away from the right place. Eventually I made it and had a great time.

My solution is to sent the pertinent information in a text message to my phone or write it in my Palm. Better yet do both. I synch my Palm once a day and I could set an e-mail address that only that device would get. This would allow me to not have to pull all my e-mail onto my Palm and only that which I really wanted. Days like today would require much more forethought or just send a snippet to the phone.

All this gets back to having the information you need at your fingertips when you want or need it. It is that roughly magnetized cloud of information that I want to follow me.

Hierarchy of Information Needs

Lou discusses the relationship between information architecture and technology, which sparked the following brain dump on my part:

This subject of information and technology has been of interest with me for quite sometime. The term "IT" has been vastly dominated by the technology portion of the term. Oddly, in organizations that have Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and with out Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) the CIOs role is largely focused on technology to serve the information (this is fine), but the stress has been technological solutions. As nearly all of us in the IT field know, the technical solutions are far from perfect (I know nothing is life is perfect) and many times require reworking business processes to take advantage of the technologies best traits. This is much akin to Keith's point about technology companies selling products and not whole solutions.

In my work I came to it from the information and communication side many years ago and along with it I married the technology side, as it was a wonderful pairing with great promise. Over the years I have heard more than anybody's fair share of, "we don't have to worry about knowing the information, we can code around it". This is the point, I learned when you pull in the reins on the technical team. This is what drew me deeper into the realm of the technical side.

If we look at information from the communication viewpoint and what role the information will play as it transfers information to humans and to other machines for use and also reuse. We have to understand the information as its basic levels, similar to Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs". What are the human elements thatare intended, i.e. what purpose does the information serve? What properties does the information need in order to transmit this information for best use? If the information is corporate sales trends and assessing and tacking variables that impact these trends, then we have to identify the human audiences that will be using this information. The basic level of "Information Need" is do we have the proper data or information to be able to create this type of report. Do we have the information types to provide usable information for the various audiences and do we understand the vocabulary of these audiences (vocabulary in this sense can be textual and visual as some audiences may best understand the information in charts and graphs, while others will best understand textual quantitative indicators). Do we have the basics to begin building this content, which will be tied to a technological question as to how the data and information is captured and stored? Once we can answer yes to these information, human, and technical questions we can move up the "Information Needs” hierarchy. It is also at this point that we know we can publish some information to have some folks make use of it, but we know the use of the information at this point will be far from optimal and the information may not be used in its proper method.

The next level would be questions of information use. We have established we have the data and content to build the information, but how will the information be used and who/what will be using the information. These questions will help shape the information structures and the medium(s) used to convey the information. The information may require different vocabularies that need to be established or used so the different audiences can best understand and make use of the information. What is the environment that the information will be used in and in what context? When these answers are established, only then can the technology to be used for the varying mediums be established. This level gives a great level certainty that the information and its use will be effective.

Far too often the technology is chosen with out asking these questions and the medium is used is driven by the technologies limitations, which limits the information's use and efficiency. Many organizations found that their reliance on storing all information in Adobe Acrobat did not fit their efficient information needs. Acrobat works best for replicating print versions of information and has other properties that work passably, like searching the text, providing information that is accessible to those that are handicapped, quickly accessing sections of that information over a network connection, etc. Many corporations found it was best or even desired to not store their information in Acrobat, but to offer the information in Acrobat as an output of another information storage methods that provided far greater information use and reuse (this does not apply to every organization as their are some organizations that make proper and efficient use of Acrobat and it serves that organization perfectly). These organizations came to the conclusion that the information was the primary importance and the information and its use should drive the technology.

The next step is to determine how the information can be optimized to take advantage of the mediums being used. This will allow the information to have the most impact. As the medium and technologies have been chosen to best present the information, at this point there are steps that can be taken to improve the marriage between the medium and the information. For example, we know that one of the mediums for the information will be Web pages; the information will need to be structured in a manner that takes advantage of the possibilities with that medium. The Web browser gives us the ability to present textual information and charts together, while providing relatively easy access to more detailed information and/or an interactive media presentation that permits the user to see the charts change over time based on the selection of these different variables (done with Flash, DHTML, etc.). Similar information could be offered in a PDF of the printed report that would print on 8.5 by 11 inch paper and one for A4 paper (the international standard paper size).

The last phase it validating and testing the information dissemination. We continually need to test to ensure we have identified all the audiences that are using the information, we are capturing all the data and information is required and makes sense to have for the information's use, we are capturing and storing the information in a means that is efficient for our needs to use the information, we are providing the audiences the information in a means that is most usable and efficient for them, and the information is being found and used.

This Information Needs hierarchy allows the marriage of technology to information where and when it makes sense. This Information Needs seems to be the basis for the user centered design, information architecture, knowledge management, experience design, etc. There is an understanding of the balance that is required between the creators of the information; the information itself; the technology to capture, store, process, and present the information; and the users of the information.

In the past few years the technology and not the information nor the user of the information were the focal points. Money has been spent on technologies that have failed the purchasers and the technology and the whole of the information technology industry gets blamed. There is a great need for people that are willing to use their minds to create the foundation for information, its use, and the technologies that can help make this more efficient. The balance and the steps in the proper order must be there to give information and technology a chance.