Journalism.co.uk asked blind volunteer John Allnutt to give us his take on several leading UK newspaper websites. John uses JAWS screen reading technology to navigate web pages and find his news online. He was aided and abetted in his assessment by pupils from Dorton College.
(Our introduction piece links to assessments of other newspaper sites. Read the profile of our volunteers and expert.)
The volunteers' views on Independent.co.uk:
John
On entering the Independent's website JAWS reads out the page title to the user, in this case 'Independent Online Edition'.
John said this could be confusing as it suggests to the blind user that you have reached a different destination from Independent.co.uk.
The text-heavy appearance of Independent.co.uk and its lack of a left-hand navigation bar aided John's ability to tab through the content, as he said he would rather be tabbing through individual links to articles than an excess of section headings.
However, one of the first links on the page - therefore read out to the user by screen-reading software - is 'link to homepage'.
John says having this link on the homepage itself is disorientating for the visually impaired or blind user, who may begin to doubt they are on the homepage.
Browsing through the homepage JAWS came across a link called 'front pages' and John was hopeful that this would take him to the top stories of the day. However, not only could JAWS not access this link saying it was invisible but the link was also out of context.
Similarly confusing is the link to The Independent on Sunday, as by entering the Independent's online edition, John had hoped and assumed that this content would feed into the homepage and news sections and not require a separate site or web page as the link suggests.
The layout of the Independent's homepage presents the user with what is essentially an online version of the print product, for example, certain sections are given more prominence on the homepage on the day that their supplements appear in print.
However, John did not think that this would cause too much of a disadvantaged for visually impaired users of the websites even though they would be unfamiliar with the layout of the print product.
"I wouldn't say the layout's bad once you know the site. The art is to learn a site off by heart and use it frequently. If the website had a list of the main topics handled by the paper that day that would be more helpful, as you already know that your paper is going to have some sport, travel, music etc.
"You don't necessarily need those links at the beginning as long as you can find them readily, because you know that they are there every day."
Using the navigational headings across the top of the page to try and find the main stories of the day, John selected the news channel link and was taken to a section headed by the following blurb:
PLEASE NOTE
The following index shows the links to every article in The News Channel with today's date (according to London time). For previous days' articles, use the Day In A Page function or click on the link to the individual sub-section.
This statement was particularly confusing when read out by JAWS and was also a link to a separate page containing fewer news items.
This new page provided its own barriers to accessibility as it included a link headed 'Interesting? Click here to explore further' which opened a pop-up window without telling the screen-reader user that this had happened.
As such John was left with a poor idea of where he had navigated to, not knowing that a new pop-up window had been opened, or how to return to the news page.
Using a JAWS search on the homepage, John successfully found the Independent's blogs section, however, given a recent redesign of this section the layout of the area is completely at odds with the rest of the Independent's website.
John said that this would be both disorientating and confusing to the blind user, even if they had become accustomed to using the main site.
Furthermore, the blogs page contained some pop-up advertising, which was not well received by JAWS.
Rather than using headlines in the same format as news articles, John found that the headings for blog posts did 'assume prior knowledge' from the user, as they did not explain what the post was about, a more literal headline would have offered more clarity: "Fair enough - I think you'd expect that if you were going to take part in a blogging-style thing."
When using JAWS to locate the site's search feature John found it was not a unique element on the page. There was a second search function offering a date-specific search which confused the matter.
John experienced similar problems with the Telegraph search function. More simple would be more fruitful, he suggests.
Once located, the site search clearly showed John where to enter text and how to change the search 'our site' or 'the web' buttons.
On the results page again, however, a search refining facility appeared above the results creating the potential for the blind user to get stuck in a perpetual loop of search.
"In principle I do think it's bad page layout to not put the most relevant thing at the top, but this might be different if you were more used to the site," John added.
"I'm not sure I've actually got to the cycling bit [the story he was searching for]. I can tab right down to the bottom of the page with JAWS without finding any results. It's almost as if JAWS hasn't managed to find the correct bit of the page at all."
Charlotte's views
Finding the headline news: "This was problematic, as a front page picture takes you to a digital edition and not the top stories as it suggests." [3/5]
Finding an article of interest: "Articles had concise headlines and pictures associated with them which helped me quickly decide if they were of interest to me, despite the size of the text."[3/5]
User interaction: "There's no space to comment at the bottom of the article and the link that says 'Find this interesting' opens up a new window, which is confusing." [1/5]
Site search: "The layout of the search results page is less confusing than it was on the front page of The Independent, because it's got little sub-headings. They actually link to different websites and pages from the news section." [4/5]
Overall design and layout: "The colour and size of the text changes, making it hard to pick items out. Darker colours, bigger pictures and more audio content would appeal to visually impaired users." [2/5]
Accessibility features for visually impaired users on Independent.co.uk:
The website includes a tool to resize fonts at the bottom of the page, which is useful to visually impaired users. However, there is no dedicated accessibility section on this website.
Response from Independent.co.uk:
"We are currently in the process of redesigning the website and are taking accessibility into account with the changes, not least by retaining scaleable fonts."
The expert's view:
Richard
"One advantage that your blind reviewer had is that JAWS does read out all the navigation links on a page, including those presented as 'pull-down' menus as on the Independent. Sighted people with limited mouse control are unable to select accurately from these 'pull-down' menus as the cursor frequently loses its focus on the menu which then closes before they have had time to select the desired option.
"John assumed that a link to 'Front Pages' would present him with today's headlines. He had no way of knowing that this particular link was a submenu of another link so unfortunately he got a montage of the printed front pages as displayed on newstands.
"As screen readers cannot read images, this was of little use. Your reviewer also missed some content because (sensibly) he did not waste time following links that merely said 'click here'. The sighted reader can guess what a link will do by its context, but a blind user is largely dependent upon the actual text used for the link."
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