When accessibility attacks
Step-click. Step-click. Step-click. Step-click. Step-click.
At the top of the steps I paused, and balancing on my crutches for a second, surveyed the Caltrain platform. In front of me was the one crosswalk where pedestrians could cross from one side (trains headed south to San Jose) to the other (trains headed north to San Francisco, which is where I need to go). But which side was which? There was not a sign in sight.
So I started crutch-walking the 200 yards or so to the other end of the platform where people were waiting. I’m pretty good on crutches but it’s still slow-going: step-click, step-click, step-click. I get three-quarters of the way to the other side of the platform and there is a sign: San Jose (Southbound). Oh no!
Now I have the information I need to make my decision - oh, but there’s no crosswalk here, I have to turn around and go back to where I started to cross over. By the time I had navigated back to the crosswalk, crossed to the other side of the platform, and started towards the ticket machines, I had missed my train.
In my normal life I’m an athlete - I play soccer, I run long distances, so walking an extra 150 yards or going up an extra flight of stairs is barely noticeable. But right now I’m a little humbled by my crutches, and I have to admit: anywhere I go, I am looking for signage/information/directions that will save me from having to travel an extra few yards unnecessarily. And I’m usually not finding it.
On the web, it’s the same story. And analogously, software professionals are “athletes” of that domain. We have high-speed access, we have healthy vision, we have the innate confidence that comes from experience to know that we can click around and explore without fear of “breaking the computer”. So we barely notice if the help text we need is below the fold or a checkout process deviates from our expectations.
Here’s the problem: accessibility is not limited to the 0.5% of your users who happen to be visually impaired. Good labeling helps everyone. (I have no idea what the real numbers are, but it’s incredibly easy to be dismissive about accessibility and justify it by saying that it impacts such a small percentage of our audience.)
What about the perfectly-healthy person who decides for the first time to try Caltrain in favor of driving to work? Not being able to find the signs - or worse yet, actually getting on the wrong train and heading in the wrong direction - is the kind of experience that makes them say “screw the environment, I’m driving.” It makes them tell their co-workers that public transit sucks and they should just drive.
On the web, we might have documented this experience as a successful transaction. I did start from San Mateo and end up in San Francisco - quantitative metrics would prove that. They wouldn’t know that I missed the train I intended to take, or deduce that I really didn’t have any other options. (I’ve had similar experiences Christmas shopping - oh, this website is awful, but they’re the only ones who can ship Widget in time - I’m going to complete this transaction and then never shop at this site again.) The only way to get at this kind of insight is qualitative analysis - user testing, follow-up surveys, heuristic analyses.
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