Cognition is probably one of the most under researched areas of accessibility and the least understood. As a result design of usable and accessible websites is incredibly speculative and hard to get right. Unlike accommodating users with screen readers (which is more of a precise art) making colours, text, fonts, layouts, images and icons speak to everyone ranging from those of us with learning difficulties, problems with perception, memory, cognition and comprehension is a hard task to fill. As autistic web pro Jamie Knight said:

Autism is a big spectrum, and in a very real way everyone is autistic!

We were lucky to get four fantastic speakers as well as a over 50 people who had a lot to contribute themselves in questions, discussions and comments over Twitter. Thank you to everyone who gave their time to make it such a valuable and informative event especially the speakers Antonia Hyde, Jamie Knight, David Owens and Ian Pouncy.

Huge thanks also to Kath Moonan who helped us find a room and the Opera Developer Network who sponsored the event.

Antonia Hyde – Accessibility Beyond Code

With years of experience working with people with cognitive and learning disabilities Antonia had a truly captive audience with her talk accessibility beyond code which included commentary on videos she had taken of Martin using websites and what he found tricky when using them

What struck me was how much her testers hit upon issues that I myself find problematic. Antonia explained just how important it is to be literal on the web and not assume that people understand even the most common of icons such as “i” for information: using icons and text is always a good way to go.

The image she showed below is a good case in point when it comes to being literal. The sign “Use escalators safely” is unhelpfully illustrated with a man running down the escalator looking to all intents as if that’s just the right thing to do. Perhaps a red cross through him would have illustrated the point better.

Antonia finished up highlighting that it’s not just the designer’s responsibility to make content accessible but also the developer and the content editor’s responsibility. I would add to this that it’s also the browser’s responsibility to help render and provide access to content that really helps the user. Something that we are keenly aware of at Opera.

Huge thanks to Martin for contributing his time and being videod.

Jamie Knight and Lion – Autism, the Internet and Antelopes

Jamie and Lion wowed us with his unique take on Autism, the Internet  and Antelopes (blog post and slides from the man himself). Being a “generalist” as he describes himself he took us through some of the projects he has worked on and what he does as a web professional.

He told us about his personal screen reader he’d built to help him read web pages when he was tired and illustrated how screen readers should not just be seen as access tech for the blind but for just about anyone who might find it useful listening to web pages. He made a good point as I occasionally (er, not enough) listen to my blog post content through VoiceOver on Mac in Opera to check my grammar which I really struggle with.

Jamie also talked in depth about how video, as great as it is, can be a problem when played automatically on download (especially when his screen reader is running) or the spoken word is too fast. He talks a little bit about this in his interview as well. He also explained that when he gets sensory overload he wished there was a way to convert text into sign to help give meaning to words. I couldn’t help thinking this would make sense for many of us who are more visual.

David Owens –  lessons learned doing usability testing

We got a first hand walk through from David on lessons learnt from user testing and I have to admit I was impressed to hear of an organisation out in the real world who were taking this group seriously. When his company initially set out to do user testing they didn’t specifically recruit people with cognitive impairments but along the way realised that they had some testers who were able to highlight key issues with their site.

David discussed style switchers on websites (A, AA and AAA for small, medium and large text etc) and how important these were for users who would never be comfortable changing their browser settings. Representing a browser maker I’m acutely aware of how important discoverability of features and preferences to help you browse are. It’s important to educate people and make them aware of how to access these however David’s point was that there are often people who will just never be comfortable changing things in the browser.

David also highlighted that you can’t assume a user remembers how to do something on your site if they’ve done it before. This was picked up by Patricia, my soon-to-be-mum-in-law, who has Fibromyalgia and often can’t remember how to do certain things. She summed it up perfectly:

Thank god other people find the same things difficult, I thought it was only me!

If we achieved nothing else on Saturday I’m happy that David helped Patricia realise that she wasn’t the one who is broken!

Ian Pouncy – content and cognition

Rounding off the day Ian gave excellent bitesize pieces of advice on content and cognition learned from his time working at Yahoo!. What I loved about is talk was that he wrapped in cross-overs with internationalsation such as clear, well worded text. He also did a walk through of a mock-up site showing us how he’d improve it.

His talk triggered some debate over lightboxes (those pesky ‘popups’, often of images that overlay a page) and how confusing they are to users who don’t understand where they have come from or how to get rid of them. I’d add to this quirks of keyboard access where they seem to be keyboard focusable but as part of the rest of the content of the underlying page making it a huge effort to tab to ‘close’ buttons (if they exist).

I was happy to see a Tweet from Alastair Campbell however suggesting he might look into the problem:

After #standardsnext (and considering an upcoming project), I think accessible lightboxes will have to be on the to-do list.

Go Alastair!

Final thoughts for me

Since joining Opera I’ve increasingly used our accessibility features within the browser while looking more closely at how people discover features within the browser that help access content in a way that is meaningful to them. As with any browser this is a huge challenge and there is an important balance in exposing access to preferences without further confusing the user.

It was great to gather feedback on what people wanted from the browser, or indeed expected, and will tie in nicely with user testing that David Sloan of the Digital Media Access Group at Dundee university and I will be doing this autumn with older users to see what they can teach us about improving our browser. So watch this space – we hope to have something to share with you early next year.

Links and things

Blog posts and Twitter coverage

• Jamie Knight
• Jeff Van Campen
• Léonie Watson
• Ian Pouncy
• Bruce Lawson – leave a comment for Bruce if you have any thoughts about stylable HTML5 forms
• Stanards.Next
• Tweets with the hash tag #standardsnext

Tools and resources

Here’s a list of bits and pieces mentioned on the day plus a few more that may help:

• WebAim research on cognition – Stepping Stones project
• WebAim: cognitive accessibility part 1 and part 2
• BBC HTML5 media player with captions
• Techdis tools
• RNIB Surf Right toolbar
• Flashblock for Firefox
• Stop autoplay for Firefox
• Accessing web content with Opera
• Using Opera 10 with VoiceOver on Mac
• WAI-AGE – Web Accessibility Initiative Ageing Education and Harmonisation
• Videos from Antonia Hyde of people with cognitive problems using the web
• Photos from Jeff Van Campen on Flickr

We wanted to do this as it seems to be the area that we web developers know the least about, most probably because it’s the area that is least documented and understood. We are all different and never more so than when it comes to cognition.

We have some excellent speakers including Antonia Hyde who leads in her field and also worked on Easy YouTube with Christian Heilmann . David Owens will be sharing what he learnt from user testing with people with cognitive problems and Jamie Knight will be sharing his experiences as as web designer with autism. Ian Pouncey from Yahoo! will also be sharing what he has learnt along the way.

So come armed with your questions, thoughts and ideas to City University, Saturday September 19th from 1pm to 4pm.

Sign up on Upcoming and see you there.

Bruce Lawson does kewai

Molly Holzschlag and Espen André Øverdahl

We kicked off with an Opera BBQ on Wednesday followed by @Media, then rounded off with Standards.Next on Saturday. All in all it was a very HTML5 themed week  and thanks to a brilliant mix of people I learnt a lot and finally met some people who I’ve been chatting with over Twitter for some time now.

@Media

@Media rocked and ended on a high note with the announcement that Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp would be taking over organisation of the event under the Web Directions monika. After so many rumours that 2009 was to be @Media’s last this was a more then welcome thing to hear. A hat tip and huge thank you to Patrick Griffiths’s for building @Media into what it is today.

Jason Santa Maria and Jon Hicks (avec a fetching tash) during the Hot Topics panel

Standards.Next

For me though the highlight of the week was the first ever Standards.Next meetup focusing on HTML5 – the big news so far to come out of 2009 (well at least I think so). We had roughly 60 people show up to help us chew the fat over HTML5, myths, canvass, APS’s, HTML5.js and accessibility. Thank you to all the speakers for making the event more than Bruce and I could have hoped for and also to everyone who showed up on what was a beautiful summer’s Saturday.

Below are a few links for those that didn’t make it and I’ll keep you updated as to when we post video of the event:

• Bruce Lawson – HTML 5: Are you mything the point? (.ods, 1.8 M), also on video. Yes you can start using some of HTML5 now, browser vendors aren’t evil, no HTML5 wont kill Flash, Silverlight and JavaScript and HTML5 does love accessibility (it’s just built in not bolted on).
• Dean Edwards – Dean presented his excellent html5.js library which will be available soon but you can get a sneak peek on video here. He demo’d implementations of Web Forms 2 that worked across browsers even adopting accessibility settings from the OS for some. An amazing piece of work.
• Remy Sharp – HTML5 JS API’s (PDF), demos and video. How JavaScript and HTML5 can play nicely together. With HTML5 taking care of the more mundane uses of JavaScript (date pickers and validation for example), JavaScript Ninja’s can now spend time on the more sophisticated stuff.
• Martin Kliehm – HTML5 and Canvas slides, links and video shorts. Martin is the go to man for canvas and presented some great research and use cases that go beyond shoot-em-out games and Etch-a-Sketch.
• Steve Faulkner – HTML5 accessibility. The Mighty Steve Faulkner talked about accessibility issues as well as the relationship of WAI-ARIA to HTML5.

Andreas Bovens, Steve Faulkner, Patrick Lauke, PPK and Bruce Lawson during the break

HTML5 Doctor

An extra bonus was the launch of HTML5 Doctor, a collaboration between Rich Clark (of HTML5 Gallery), Bruce Lawson, Jack Osborne, Mike Robinson, Remy Sharp and Tom Leadbetter.

Next for Standards.Next

Plans are yet to be firmed up but we’re looking at doing cognition and accessibility Saturday 19th of September just after Techshare. If you’re interested in speaking or coming a long check the standards.nextwebsite for updates, we’d love to have you come along.

Update 29 June, 2009: Big thank you to Remy who’s managed to video Bruce, Dean’s and his own talks:

• Bruce Lawson -HTML 5: Are you mything the point?.
• Dean Edwards – html5.js here. He demo’d implementations of Web Forms 2 that worked across browsers even adopting accessibility settings from the OS for some. An amazing piece of work.
• Remy Sharp – HTML5 JS API’s.