Project 3: Assess HCII Accessibliity

For this project, you will develop a report about some of the biggest problems with the accessibility of the HCII Website.

Learning Goals

• Learn how to use an automated tool to develop an initial list of errors.

• Learn how to use a screen reader to develop a deeper view of errors.

• Learn how to generate an accessibility report.

Your goal is to evaluate the accessibility of http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/ You will need to read and reference the WCAG 2.0 guidelines when doing this. You should use the 4 guidelines associated with Principle 1, 4 guidelines associated with Principle 2, and 4 guidelines associated with Principle 3 as the basis for your evaluation. The guidelines are listed at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

This project has 3 parts.

Part 1:

You will need to scope your Accessibility Evaluation. One way to do this is to think in terms of how particular tasks are affected by the accessibility of the page. To scope your accessibility evaluation, think of 2 tasks that you imagine visitors to the HCII home page may want to perform. To make it more interesting, the tasks that you choose should require someone to visit at least two other subpages (focus on a specific program: Masters, PhD. or Undergrad degree).

Use http://wave.webaim.org/ to generate a report for each page you are evaluating.

The report will have four tabs: Errors, Features and Alerts; Structure/Order; Text-only; and Outline. You should review all of them with your tasks in mind. Next, generate a list of 3 of the worst accessibility problems on the page. These problems should have high severity, based on their frequency impact and persistence. Do this BEFORE part two of the assignment. Use the form provided (attached to this page below). Be sure to specify the WCAG the category and subcategory this would fall under (e.g. 2.1 Keyboard Accessible)

Part 2:

Use a screen reader, with the monitor on, to complete the tasks you identified in part 1, using only screen reader commands (NO MOUSE). When finished, review the most serious issues you encountered and generate a list of 3 of the worst problems you encountered and one good aspect you encountered (you may include problems that are not covered by the WCAG, as long as you can argue that they are accessibility problems).

Part 3:

Write a report recommending the top 3 most important things that the HCII should address. In addition, compare the type and severity of problems that you found in Part 1 and Part 2. Also write a reflection summarizing what you thought of both approaches. Which approach took more time? Which approach do you think generated better information? Which was more thorough in catching accessibility problems? What are tradeoffs between the two?

Create a zip file for your 6 problems and your report and email it to Jeff and Jen.

Also prepare a short (< 10 minute) presentation to give in class of your results.