1.3.3 Sensory characteristics

The guideline says:

Instructions provided for understanding and operating content do not rely solely on sensory characteristics of components such as shape, colour, size, visual location, orientation, or sound.

What does that mean?

We come back to colour in more detail in a later guideline but this one is really very general. It refers to any item on the page that isn't text or a described image... things like navigation buttons, ways of categorising, making choices... anything where the user has to choose based on a colour, a shape, where something is on the page... that kind of thing.

What do I need to do?

This could be misinterpreted as an instruction to avoid the use of colour, shape, position and so on... but all it really is, is a reminder that you need more. You can have an arrow at the bottom of the page for your next button, but just make sure it is labelled in such a way that a screen reader can read it. It may need alt text, for example.

I think one of the worst offenders in this category is schools. Schools use all kinds of documents, forms and spreadsheets that rely on colour coding. To be fair, many teachers mark books using colour coding. Colour is so important to us. 

We used to use red, orange and green spots on risk assessments. We colour coded progress spreadsheets, using red, yellow, green and blue to indicate whether each child had not progressed, progressed less than they should, progressed as they should or progressed further than they should. I use the phrase, 'as they should' partially in jest, of course. Who says they should?!!

I quite like to use icons when I'm designing user interfaces, especially for my eLearning. However, icons rely on visual perception, so I always either give them alt text, or better still, use a combination of icon and words. For example, my next button might be a box containing a right arrow and the word NEXT. My previous button would be a left arrow and the word PREV. It just means people don't have to rely on sight. 

Summary

A lot of this comes down to thought and awareness. It's about getting into the habit of thinking from another person's perspective. If I now said, "Click on the red circle on the left to see some examples of bad practice," you would have to be able to see colour, shape and position, to find where to click. You would also have to be able to use a mouse, most likely. That's a lot of assumed abilities, considering my possible audience. I could consider adding text into my red circle that a screen reader could pick up. That way, the whole red circle representing bad practice thing is still there but I haven't excluded anyone. I would also need to change the instruction so that it didn't rely on sight. Something like, "Click on the BAD PRACTICE button that follows this paragraph, to see some examples of bad practice."

Just for the record, there is no button... it was just an example!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

For anyone who's ever wondered what's inside a computer

Image
The inside of a computer is really interesting! It's like being able to open up a brain and see how it all connects together and how it links to the other organs in the body. You don't need to know it but it's interesting and sometimes rather handy to understand how it works (at a basic level, at least). Motherboard I love looking at the motherboard. It's full of little tiny parts, chips, places to plug things in, and bits that stick out through the case of the computer. Over time, they have changed a fair bit but they still do the same job. When you look at the back of a computer, you can see lots of places where you can plug things in: USBs, printers, headphones, etc. Most of these are on the motherboard and connect to other parts inside. Central processing unit (CPU) This is sometimes just called the processor. It's now a tiny component but it has a very important job. It's what makes the whole thing work. Because it does such a big job, it
Read more

Articulate 360 - Storyline

Image
I've kept it fairly quiet but I've been looking for a new job for a few months now. Not that my old job isn't great, but I've always wanted to specialise more in e-learning and my main aim has been to get into content creation. E-learning is a growing industry, so there are many jobs out there. Of course, the vast majority are in London and I have no desire to move back there at all. The other sticking point though is a piece of software, that I have no experience of and is very expensive to acquire. Nearly all e-learning jobs want experience in Articulate 360 and specifically in Storyline. What is it? Storyline is a bit like PowerPoint in some ways. You have slides and you can combine different kinds of content with transitions and animations. However, in the words of one of my favourite films, "It is so much more than just" PowerPoint. You can bring in a whole level of user interaction that PowerPoint doesn't even begin to touch. When your project is
Read more

1.4.3 Contrast (minimum)

Image
I've skipped a couple of guidelines because either we've already covered them or they are not relevant to most people (other than web developers). I might come back to one of them later but I wanted to move on to something that is relevant to everyone. Contrast This is the guideline that I seem to spend the most time fixing when clients send me documents or presentations to check for WCAG compliance. I'm not sure whether people just forget it or genuinely can't tell when the contrast is getting dodgy. This guideline has got more detail than the others and says: The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for large text, which has a ratio of 3:1.  The obvious immediate issue here, is how you know that. I'm going to address this in reverse order, starting with the contrast ratio and then going back into colour codes. WebAim Contrast Checker Before we watch the video, just open this page: Contrast Checker To use it,
Read more