About Accessibility Pages

Posted on: October 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: asks | Tagged: , | 6 Comments »

A while ago, I asked a question about accessibility help pages on twitter, and even set up a poll, asking “Where on the page do you put your accessibility help link?“.

I gave four options, and the results were as follows:

  • At the top, in the first few tabs/links. 44% (35 votes)
  • At the bottom, in the last few tabs/links. 25% (20 votes)
  • What accessibility help link? 29% (23 votes)
  • Other 1% (1 votes)

I’ve been meaning to blog about it for ages, and was reminded about it again today, when I looked at three or four sites in a row which had accessibility help links as the very last link on the page.

I then posted to twitter that I:

would love to see stats for how many views accessibility statements/pages that are linked at the very end of page get, vs top of page.

I was really pleased when @AndyDBryant replied:

@pixeldiva If it can wait til tomorrow, I can dig out stats for my employer’s site (accessibility link at bottom). What kind of time period?

I wasn’t expecting any particular answers to my tweet, I was really just thinking out loud, but I really would love to know how many page views accessibility pages get, regardless of their positioning.

I have a few theories about them, but I’d like a bit more data before I expand on what they are, which is where you come in.

If you work on the web, have access to statistics and have an accessibility page, I would absolutely love it if you could give me the following info:

  1. Where on the page your accessibility page is.
  2. How many views your accessibility page has had in a given time period.
  3. How many views your home page has had in that time period.
  4. What that time period is.

If you can give me the name/url of the site that would be awesome, but if you can’t for whatever reason, that’s fine.

You can also use a fake name along with your comment if you feel the need, but I’d really appreciate it if you used a real email address (it’ll only be seen by me, and I won’t use it for evil, promise) so that I can contact you for further info (if you’re happy for me to do that).

If you really feel uncomfortable posting stats publicly but still want to share, you can email me instead.

Thank you.

Other, possibly related, posts:

  1. Thought-provoking posts on Accessibility
  2. Designing Accessibility Into Themes

6 Comments on “About Accessibility Pages”

  1. 1 Gijs said at 10:34 am on October 23rd, 2009:

    Where on the page your accessibility page is.
    At the bottom in the footer.

    How many views your accessibility page has had in a given time period.
    698 pageviews in one year.

    How many views your home page has had in that time period.
    The site (not just the homepage) had 339.566 pageviews in that year.

    What that time period is.
    22/10/2008 – 22/10/2009

    Note: because AnySurfer is the Belgian quality mark for accessible websites, our stats may differ from a ‘normal’ site.

    Conclusion: for every 500 pageviews, 1 went to the accessibility help page.

  2. 2 Henny Swan said at 11:02 am on October 23rd, 2009:

    There’s another option that’s worth considering in the mix with the “Accessibility” link debate and that’s having the link worded simply as “Help”.

    A lot of people who need accessibility help wont necessarily associate themseves with the word “accessibility” so the link is lost to them. Of course, equally, there may be a few that actively look for an “Accessibility” link but arguably they already know what type of content to find there anyway and will get there comfortably via a “Help” link.

    I floated this idea at RNIB and we ended up going with “Help” rather than “Accessibility” and this worked well. It drew more users in and felt (to me at least) less prescriptive making no assumptions about who may want to explore content there.

    I’ve also done the same thing at Opera so that we have an “Access Opera” section within the “Support” section rather than an “Accessibility” link. Content there is still being developed and we’ll be adding a section on accessibility browsing tips for the browser itself soon.

    I don’t necessarily think there’s a right or wrong here except that the link – whatever it is – needs to be high in the tab order and visible. Simples!

    I’d be really intrested to hear your final stats and will dig around in Opera to see if I can find any info to share with you.

  3. 3 Andy Bryant said at 11:25 am on October 23rd, 2009:

    Interesting comments from Henny. I previously worked for a UK local authority, which we completely redeveloped in early 2006. We opted for a link to a page named ‘Help’ having toyed with both ‘Accessibility’ and ‘Accessibility help’, also believing it to be more ‘universal’ and a term most people would understand.

    I agree that whatever you call it, the link should be prominent in the header of the page, and I suspect that the results of this survey will show how much of a difference the placement makes.

  4. 4 Ann said at 12:22 pm on October 23rd, 2009:

    Henny,

    That’s exactly my suspicion – that a combination of the link text being “Accessibility” (or variants thereof) and being at the bottom of the page is meaning that the pages aren’t being visited and the info is going unread.

    That said, whether that info is aimed at the end-user or a pile of useless back-covering that’s a waste of everyone’s time is a whole other ball of wax…

  5. 5 Andrew Green said at 1:45 pm on October 26th, 2009:

    Here’s the stats for http://www.woking.gov.uk, for Oct 2008 – Sept 2009:

    Homepage pageviews: 549,496
    Accessibility page pageviews: 20,108
    Total pageviews for whole site: 9,132,208

    Link location: top of page on all pages
    Link text: “Site help and accessibility options”

    Cheers,
    Andrew.

  6. 6 Karen said at 2:17 pm on October 26th, 2009:

    I am intrigued by Henny’s “Help” idea. Accessibility is a word that can be misunderstood, overlooked, or ignored. Just think about the situations where people say something is accessible when they mean available.

    Help is pretty straightforward (I think).

    This past weekend, I heard about the CNN re-design. I wondered about its accessibility and found nothing on that topic anywhere. I switched to BBC.co.uk to compare. They have “Accessibility Help”, and as far as I recall, they’ve always had something about accessibility somewhere in a header or footer.

    Some sites have “accessibility statements”, and I regard those as PR or political, or whatever you want to call them. No offense meant, but the wording just makes me think it is a declaration of where that site stands. Technical details are there, as well. Perhaps a statement is better placed in a press or PR area, but the “how do I / can I get around this site” info should be readily available.

    Not finding anything makes me nervous about CNN. The way the promo video was worded makes me think the re-design only covers “making pretty” and “re-arranging”. Average users may not know what terms like “usability” or “accessibility” mean, but they could have used plain words like “even users who are blind or deaf can enjoy a full experience blablabla” – if that is indeed the case. I have my doubts.

    Just a bit of blather from me. :)