MODULE GOAL(S)
Website Usability Best Practices – SUMMARY OVERVIEW
You could say that a good website is a P.O.U.R. website.
Perceivable. Operable. Understandable. Robust.
The beauty of a principled approach like POUR is the emphasis on understanding your website visitors.
What is Usability?
According to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, usability is about designing products to be effective, efficient, and satisfying. This may include general aspects that impact everyone and do not disproportionately impact people with disabilities. Usability practice and research often does not sufficiently address the needs of people with disabilities.
What is Accessibility?
According to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, web accessibility means that people with disabilities can equally perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with websites and tools. It also means that they can contribute equally without barriers. Creating an accessible website allows visitors with disabilities un-impeded access to your content, by helping them do things like read your blog, watch/listen to videos, and book a room or experience with you, with ease.
How Do They Overlap?
Many accessibility requirements required by the World Wide Web Consortium will directly improve your website’s usability.
For example, providing sufficient contrast between the colours on a landing page (accessibility) will not only benefit the vision impaired, but will also benefit people using the web on a mobile device in bright sunlight or in a dark room (usability).
Adding captions to a video (accessibility) not only make it accessible to the hearing impaired, but will also benefit people in noisy and quiet environments (usability).
Why Are They Important?
Usability designs that incorporate accessibility requirements ensure that your website is technically and functionally usable by people with disabilities, and can lead to a more accessible, usable, and inclusive web for everyone.
Accessibility and usability should never be an afterthought and this module will help you keep that top of mind.
In this module you will learn tools, techniques, and principles to help you evaluate your website and ensure it meets best practices and accessibility standards for design and development.
Existing Resources – DBC Learning Centre
Existing Resources – Secondary Source
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