Optimise user registration

September 1, 2009

Accessibility isn’t just limited to the text on your website – it applies to all types of content including multimedia. With video and audio becoming more and more common across the web it’s essential that you do as much as possible to open up this content to all website users. Making video and audio accessible isn’t as complicated as you may think. Simply follow these key guidelines for the different user groups and you’ll be well on your way:

  • Blind web users

The key requirement for blind web users is that all visual changes within videos are conveyed through non-visual means. Ideally this would be through an additional voice-over within the video (which can be switched on or off) describing the visual changes. Creating this for all your videos can be very costly and time-consuming, so an alternative is to provide a written transcript for the video, with a comprehensive description of the video. Also, ensure that video and audio don’t automatically play on web pages as the sound can interfere with screen reader speech.

  • Mobility-impaired web users

For most mobility-impaired users, effective keyboard access to content is the key factor here. All audio/video controls need to work with the keyboard as well as the mouse and the tabbing order through these controls should be logical (which usually means left-to-right). Finally, there should be a focus state for each control when tabbed onto - often this is a yellow border around the control so it’s probably best to follow this convention. Do also bear in mind that blind users utilising screen readers are also keyboard-only users so these guidelines also apply to them.

  • Deaf web users

For deaf web users the most important thing is that equivalents are provided for all content that relies on sound. This means offering written transcripts for audio files and subtitles within videos (which can be switched on or off). Ideally, and for optimal accessibility, you’ll also provide sign language for any videos as this is the first language for many hearing impaired people (especially those deaf since birth).

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One Response to “ Optimise user registration ”

  1. SEO Expert on September 3, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    so usability of web page is evolving big time. now you have to optimize your website for each type and category of user which sound very hard but it is not if you have covered all the basic in planning of your project, user is key and user optimization is optimal, with out user optimization your website or web page is nothing but an other page on internet which do not have any meaning to millions of internet users