The accessibility of museum websites

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The accessibility of museum websites
Results from an English investigation and
international comparisons

• Helen Petrie and Neil King
• Centre for Human Computer
• Interaction Design, City University
• Marcus Weisen, Council for
• Museums, Libraries and Archives

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Overview of the talk
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The context for this study beyond the ramp at
the entrance

• Museums in the UK have made considerable efforts
  to make their physical premises accessible to
  people with disabilities
• What about other aspects of the visitor
  experience?
• The law in the UK requires websites to be made
  accessible to people with disabilities
• There are also targets for government websites
  and websites receiving funding from the
  government to be accessible

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Requirements for accessibility the technical
component (acronym soup)

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• Version 1, 1999 (WCAG1)
• 14 Guidelines, 65 checkpoints
• Level A, Level AA, Level AAA
• (UK/EU requirement Level AA)

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Requirements for accessibility the legal and
user experience components

• The UK law (and the WAI definition of
  accessibility) states that people with
  disabilities should be able to use a website
  (website owners must make reasonable adjustments
  to ensure that they can)
• The WCAG Guidelines are important for developing
  accessibility websites, but does following these
  guidelines ensure an accessible site?

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The MLA audit

• to establish the current state of accessibility
  of museum, library and archive web sites in
  England
• to benchmark the current state of accessibility
  against national and international standards
• to identify current areas of best practice and
  those which require improvement and
• to create a strategy for improving accessibility
  of web sites in the sector

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Our audit of museum websites
As part of a larger audit of museum, library and
archive websites
125 museum websites audited for accessibility

• 20 Academic
• 31 Local authority
• 30 Independent
• 19 National

25 International
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Automated testing against WCAG1

• Takes at least an hour to
• manually check a web page against all 65
  WCAG1checkpoints
• So use automated tools - but
• can only check about 22 checkpoints
• Used WebXM www.watchfire.com

WebXM
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Technical accessibility levels
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Problems to be resolved (Designer measure)
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Potential problems for users (User Measure)
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User testing of 12 websites

• 15 Users 5 Blind, 5 partially sighted, 5
  dyslexic
• 2 representative tasks per website
• Each person evaluated 4 websites
• 15 x 2 x 4 120 tasks
• Data Success rates, problems, ease of use

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User testing ease of task ratings
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User testing success rates
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Key problems

• Link names are not meaningful
• Poor contrast between text and background
• Text too dense, not enough headings
• Inconsistent navigation mechanisms
• No ALT texts on images

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Relationship between WCAG and user testing
results

• 22 of user problems would not have been
  eliminated by following the WCAG guidelines (for
  all the museum, library and archive data)
• The two museums with the best WCAG results were
  described by users as catastrophes, impossible
  to navigate, to find what one wanted
• gt Guidelines are necessary, but not sufficient

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Conclusions

• Levels of accessibility (both technical and user
  oriented) could be better (but museum websites
  considerably better than a general sample of
  websites in UK - 19 passed level A)
• Accessibility is not easy - very complex
  situation both technically and in terms of human
  needs
• English museums fared considerably better than an
  international comparison group
• As we research this area more we can produce
  better guidance and the MLA sector can be at the
  forefront of this activity and lead the way on
  best practice

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More information

• Full web accessibility audit report available
• www.mla.gov.uk/action/learnacc/00access_asp3