Accessibility Quick Tip 3: Text Equivalents for Multimedia

Posted on February 25, 2008 by Alexis Brion

If possible, a text equivalent should be provided for all visual information in a website, like video, music and interactive graphics. There are several reasons why a description text should be included in a website design.

- Old browsers might not be able to display some multimedia files

- Some browsers might not have the necessary plugins and the user might not be able to update it (or might not want to)

- Impaired people could have problems interacting with multimedia

- Visually impaired people could need a text version of the multimedia file to be read by web readers

- Not every body has a high speed internet connection to download multimedia files

Why should you care? Improving usability helps everybody surfing your website, not only the impaired ones. Imagine that you trying to teach something through multimedia content, like a video; giving text explanation of what is going on in that video could improve the understanding of the idea you are trying to teach.

The BBC makes a good job providing an advance text to tell users what’s in the video. Unfortunately the BBC does not give an explanation about the video itself, if the user is not able to play the video no content would be delivered at all.

BBC Video Example

Most Cnet News videos and photo slides have more than decent descriptions of what’s going on there.

Cnet Video Example With Explanation Text

An image or video says a lot, but you could add much more value to that if you provide equivalent text for that media. At the end, if the user is able to see that media anyways, the text will increase the understanding of the message you are trying to deliver.

Interactive Explaining, Great Value For Users

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Alexis Brion

Explaining something through graphics is a great thing that could help users, but you can improve that even more if you make that interactive. We all learn in an interactive way through life, so why don’t we do that on the web? Keep in mind that a clear explanation could improve the overall website usability and could persuade users to use [and buy] your services.

Let me play, Google. I was playing with the AdWords configuration and think that the Google advertisement configuration website could be a little bit improved. I’m new there but still I think the whole interface is a little bit messy. But there is one [more] thing that Google is making in a great way, they are using an interactive graphic to teach users about the AdWords settings. You might think that this is obvious, but unfortunately not everybody is using this kind of simplicity to explain things. Have a closer look:

As the user selects between Lower Budget and Higher Budget the primary and the secondary effects change, in this case the number of impressions and the clicks. The graphic also makes clear that the ad position does not change.

Budget Interaction A

Same as before, the user plays between Lower and Higher CPC to see what the primary and secondary effects are.

CPC Interaction A

This interactive graphic tries to explain something a little bit complicated, the use of keywords, but it is very successful giving clear examples.

Keywords Interaction A

Providing A Privacy Options Page, Facebook Design

Posted on February 13, 2008 by Alexis Brion

Giving users an easy way to see and change their privacy policy gives them a better sense of security and at the end they might finish up giving you more information if you take the time to design a good privacy page. Keep in mind that some users don’t want to share any kind of information with websites but, fortunately, thats not the typical user profile.

"give them the chance to control all that data all the time…"

Most users will accept to give you some information, specially if you give them the chance to control all that data all the time. That’s why it’s important to give users an easy access to the privacy settings, make that link highly visible, like Facebook does.

Facebook has also a good privacy settings page design. They grouped the settings in different categories. Once inside the category the user has great amount of options. My first impression was that this was too much, but if the website gives the option to deactivate single features there are more possibilities for the others to remain active.