Web Usability and Accessibility Activities in ITL
The Information Access Division (IAD) has recently been involved in activities of several professional organizations related to web usability and accessibility. On June 4, 2001, Sharon Laskowski, in IAD, presented a paper at the 7th Conference on Human Factors and the Web in Madison, Wisconsin. The paper, "The Cultural Context of Web Genres: Content vs. Style", was co-authored with Professor Albert Badre of the Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center of Georgia Institute of Technology, and was one of 8 papers accepted. The paper examines user performance and preference for shopping vs. news style web sites by identifying the key attributes of the two genres as they apply to web sites and testing users on four sites: news or shopping content with shopping and news layouts. The research suggests a potential relationship between performance on the World Wide Web and preference for the shopping style. On the whole users preferred the "shopping" layout to the news layout, even when viewing news content. People chose News as Shopping as their favorite site, even though it was difficult to use. People who preferred News as Shopping did better on both News as Shopping and News as News, than those who preferred News as News. The conference papers and presentations are available at http://www.optavia.com/hfwebOn June 23-24, 2001, Sharon Laskowski served as a panelist at the 7th Annual Research Symposium, which was part of the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North American (RESNA) annual conference in Reno, Nevada. The Research Symposium this year tackled the topic of "Emerging and Accessible Telecommunication and Information Technologies - Challenges in Engineering Design to Encompass Disabilities, Considerations for Inclusive Consumer Use, and Future Opportunities to Address the Mandate for Universal Access." The second day of the Symposium was highlighted by open panel discussions; Dr. Laskowski served as a panelist for two of these discussions. The first was "What Does Compliance Mean? - Who Determines Compliance? - And How Do We Measure Compliance?" where she discussed her views on "E&IT (electronic and information technology) Accessibility: Compliance and Measurement." The second panel was "
Industry Standards And Their Role In Accessibility and Compliance" where she discussed "Standard Test Reporting for 508 and Beyond." Information about the RESNA conference and symposium can be found at http://www.resna.orgFinally, Dr. Laskowski co-organized a workshop, "Exploring Measurement and Evaluation Methods For Accessibility", on June 25, 2001 at the 10th Annual Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) in Las Vegas, Nevada with Bill LaPlant from the Census Bureau and Mark Stimson from Oracle Corporation. This workshop had the objective of fostering discussion that could lead to the development of methods for measuring and reporting on the usability of electronic and information technology (E&IT) products for the access of data and information by people with disabilities. Improved usability for this group of users will not only help address regulatory requirements, but also encourage improved product design in general. The hope is that new or adapted usability evaluation methods for measuring accessibility in terms of user performance will enable usability professionals to provide the sound advice needed by industry product developers, service providers, as well as procurement officials, to ensure accessibility of E&IT products. The workshop was one of the more popular workshops at UPA and was filled to capacity almost entirely by people from industry. Position papers and other material from the workshop can be found at http://www.nist.gov/accessws and a final report will be released soon. Information about the UPA conference is available at http://www.upassoc.org
CONTACT: Sharon Laskowski, ext. 4535