What is important to remember
Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2025 5:57 am
User testing on the initial teleservice, the user manipulated his computer on his side while his screen was projected onto a larger one in front of us.
The second part of the user tests was done on an uncoded prototype of the future solution on Figma and from the components of the client's design system. For these reasons, we were unable to test the solution with blind users, since the prototypes were not accessible and readable by voice assistance. We therefore selected a broader panel of users, in particular to take into account as many profiles and needs as possible. Thus, we asked visually impaired people, non-disabled companions, deaf people or people with a cognitive disorder. We were therefore able to observe a multitude of different uses within the panel and here again we were surprised by the specific uses of each.
Let's take the example of the blind and the visually impaired. For one, keyboard navigation is necessary while for the other, it is possible to use the mouse. If all the RGAA rules are applied, then keyboard navigation will be optimal and the elements correctly read. Unfortunately, this will not be the case for all visually impaired people, especially for those who use a digital magnifier and therefore will never see their screen in its entirety. This is a detail that proved to be very significant during testing. The division of the screen and the highlighting of the interaction elements must be marked, the cause and effect links must really be grouped together in order to be able to see the impact of one's actions directly. This also meets the needs of people with mild cognitive disabilities, for whom it is necessary to simplify location on the screen, minimize as much as possible the amount of information to be processed, etc.
Example of the effect of the magnifying glass on a screen: the reading direction is from top to bottom but only on one side of the screen at a time, so actions positioned on the right but attached to elements on the left are pushed into the background and risk going unnoticed (here the "access my file" button).
Finally, testing the teleservice with a deaf person was able to alert us to the importance of word choice and the difficulty for this population to understand written French, especially complex sentences and words. Indeed, a large and significant singapore telegram data portion of the deaf population in France, specifically those who are born deaf, have little or no knowledge of the French language since they communicate in sign language. This need is in particular consistent with many returns from non-deaf users, who expressed frustration with the meaning of the sentences or words used, which come from very administrative jargon.
Of course, this feedback is not about saying that all digital services must be systematically accessible to everyone. However, it remains essential to know your target users and take their needs into consideration before developing a service. Reducing accessibility to a task to be checked off on a regulatory level is very likely to miss the point why this regulation was made. Because like ergonomics with UX, accessibility provides general standards and rules that promote inclusion but remains limited in optimizing the user experience. Indeed, the proper understanding and use of an interface is also done through the analysis of the specificities of uses, needs and irritants that are specific to users in a given context, faced with an interface with a specific goal, and that a reference framework cannot encompass.
So building an accessible interface is not just thinking about accessibility at the time of UI design or development, but it is thinking about it at the time of design by including a panel of users who are diverse and representative of the target users. It is taking into account their uses and their needs in the same way as those of people without any disabilities.
The second part of the user tests was done on an uncoded prototype of the future solution on Figma and from the components of the client's design system. For these reasons, we were unable to test the solution with blind users, since the prototypes were not accessible and readable by voice assistance. We therefore selected a broader panel of users, in particular to take into account as many profiles and needs as possible. Thus, we asked visually impaired people, non-disabled companions, deaf people or people with a cognitive disorder. We were therefore able to observe a multitude of different uses within the panel and here again we were surprised by the specific uses of each.
Let's take the example of the blind and the visually impaired. For one, keyboard navigation is necessary while for the other, it is possible to use the mouse. If all the RGAA rules are applied, then keyboard navigation will be optimal and the elements correctly read. Unfortunately, this will not be the case for all visually impaired people, especially for those who use a digital magnifier and therefore will never see their screen in its entirety. This is a detail that proved to be very significant during testing. The division of the screen and the highlighting of the interaction elements must be marked, the cause and effect links must really be grouped together in order to be able to see the impact of one's actions directly. This also meets the needs of people with mild cognitive disabilities, for whom it is necessary to simplify location on the screen, minimize as much as possible the amount of information to be processed, etc.
Example of the effect of the magnifying glass on a screen: the reading direction is from top to bottom but only on one side of the screen at a time, so actions positioned on the right but attached to elements on the left are pushed into the background and risk going unnoticed (here the "access my file" button).
Finally, testing the teleservice with a deaf person was able to alert us to the importance of word choice and the difficulty for this population to understand written French, especially complex sentences and words. Indeed, a large and significant singapore telegram data portion of the deaf population in France, specifically those who are born deaf, have little or no knowledge of the French language since they communicate in sign language. This need is in particular consistent with many returns from non-deaf users, who expressed frustration with the meaning of the sentences or words used, which come from very administrative jargon.
Of course, this feedback is not about saying that all digital services must be systematically accessible to everyone. However, it remains essential to know your target users and take their needs into consideration before developing a service. Reducing accessibility to a task to be checked off on a regulatory level is very likely to miss the point why this regulation was made. Because like ergonomics with UX, accessibility provides general standards and rules that promote inclusion but remains limited in optimizing the user experience. Indeed, the proper understanding and use of an interface is also done through the analysis of the specificities of uses, needs and irritants that are specific to users in a given context, faced with an interface with a specific goal, and that a reference framework cannot encompass.
So building an accessible interface is not just thinking about accessibility at the time of UI design or development, but it is thinking about it at the time of design by including a panel of users who are diverse and representative of the target users. It is taking into account their uses and their needs in the same way as those of people without any disabilities.