Quality of UK Cultural Websites: evaluation

Kate FernieKate FernieICT Adviser (EU projects)ICT Adviser (EU projects)

MLAMLA

MLAThe 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 - User-centred – 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 SectorWeb 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 W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines http://www.w3.org/WAI

• Using WebXM 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: findingsOne homepage passed Priority 1, 2

and 3 (Level AAA) automated checks

• BUT page flagged 32 manual warnings

Checks and warnings1.1 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

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 problems2.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 12th 2004:

http://www.mla.gov.uk/action/learnacc/00access_03.asp

kate.fernie@mla.gov.uk