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accessibility guidelines as mobile guidelines
Apparently I have nothing better to do over the holidays than catch up on back reading. In this case, I had downloaded the Nielsen Norman Group's research report, Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities (currently free). It is a useful report, providing 75 guidelines for accommodating users with vision and motor difficulties. The guidelines are summarized starting on page 35.
I point you to this report not because I expect many readers of this blog are designing web pages for computer users, but because I know many of you are designing mobile web sites. Designing for accessibility by all users includes designing for accessibility by mobile devices, and the majority of these recommendations apply.
- Very important to mobile: 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 27, 28, 30, 32*, 33, 34, 35, 36, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54, 57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 67, 68, 73, 74
- Useful for some mobile users: 3, 4, 5, 6, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 31, 39, 40, 42, 48, 49, 60, 62, 69
- Won't hurt a mobile site: 23, 24, 26, 29, 37, 38, 52, 53, 55, 56, 61, 63, 66, 70, 71, 72, 75
- Don't do on your mobile site: none
* More relevantly, make the page title element be meaningful. Users use that information in history and bookmarks; if they can't tell the difference between your home page and a specific story page they won't be able to find you again easily.
The reason why there is so much crossover is that using a small screen to view a large page is a very similar experience to using a screen magnifier, and using a very small scroll-and-select device (mass market phone, no touch) is very similar to using a screen reader. Even the vision difficulties can be replicated by phone use: phones are frequently used in less than ideal lighting conditions, or in vibration environments. Motor problems are replicated by trying to use touch screens with fingertips and operating the device in vibrating environments. Cognitive problems are replicated by slow rendering and download speeds combined with environment distractions.
This logic applies both to designing assuming the browser will shrink your "full web" down to a phone as well as designing mobile web sites from scratch.
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