Skills day: Will Allen, Netskills: Website Audit / Evaluation
Will Allen explains how Netskills looks under the bonnet of websites
The idea of audit often makes people nervous - wonder what it’s going to reveal when have spent so much time on a site. But don’t be overly-precious about your websites. So I will give a broad outline of what we look out for - a few tips and tools and options.
What are we evaluating?
JISC requirements: technical issues (validation and web standards, browser checking), usability/acessibility issues (navigation, contact details, searchability), pages content (printing of pages, quality of writing, text formatting)
It’s a bit like an MOT - we look under the bonnet…
So we looked at a variety of JISC project websites. Did they have validation to modern web standards? Think of website as an aircraft carrier - it’s the carrier of your information. In terms of validation and page-checking is to compare process of writing a web page to process we would do when word processing - spellchecking, checking for grammar etc - you;re checking against formal standards. Same with the webpage - checking it against the grammar of html to make sue that have the pages written with sound structure. It’s about adding semantic structure to information.
Separation of structure from style - keep them separate and then people can choose whether to merge the two or not. If on a slow connection may want to turn off style stuff and just have the structure.
Firefox - go to view-pagestyle-no style and can view just the html - can be v revealing - essentially left with links and then the key information on the page.
Zen Garden - a well-structured page with the same content styled differently by different designers - shows the difference a stylesheet can make.
A List Apart - has good features and good example of how to use css to make very easily printable pages.
Test your site: validate your pages, turn off stylesheets, turn off javascript, check your 404 pages - what happens when someone finds a broken link? - test your pages in a range of browsers - do a Q+D check for semantic heading structure, the underpinning of the site
Accessibility: sound underlying structure is vital - make sure all internet users, regardless of ability, can obtain information from your site - it’s about increasing he number of people who can access and gain from your site. Try testing your pages just by navigating with the keyboard rather than with a mouse. Many tools out there claim to check for accessibility but what do they check against? Might be WCAG1.0 and so on but what do they tell you? You need to find out from your users. A formal investigation by the 2004 Disability Rights Commission found that about 80% failed the lowest level in WCAG 1.0. Automated tools cannot verify compliance - 45% of user-detected problems do not directly violate a checkpoint. Trade-off between the so-called guidelines and what users tell you that they find difficulty. Disabled users said they felt that sites did not take into account their specific needs. Many users do not know about the range of accessibility features in most operating systems and browsers. Involving disbaled users in the design and testing process is likelt to improve usability for all.
A holistic approach: do you know who your audience is? what kind of expertise and knowledge do they have? so a holitic approach might find solutions from a variety of sources
Usability: it’s about happier users - can they find what they are looking for quickly and easily? Usability can only really be tested by the users themselves. The web team are far too tied up in it.
Economic and Social data service: has a section for new users which draws them in and makes it easy from them
Page content: understand the way users process web pages - who are you writing for? do you use appropriate language for them? tends to be less formal than print.
Consider two options: tell them quick before they go OR encourage users to “stay awhile”
Language is an integral part of design - establish trust and web credibility through spelling and grammar, up-to-date links, reviewed links. Keep thinking about your audience - entice them to find out more
Netskills audit: independent and expert website evaluation - includes a structured report - also does in-depth user testing
Comment: Brian: one thing that has changed is that web is increasingly about applications rather than information - new WCAG guidelines have changed and there’s a conflict between richer usability and compliance with strict guidelines - depends on the purpose of the resource and knowing who your users are - about widening participation.
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