PRP Findings.

PRP Artefact evaluation one.


My first artefact was a questionnaire on the awareness of aid on the web for visually impaired users, I will now evaluate my findings on the subject.

After receiving the feedback from the survey my findings where mainly mixed, the first two questions where about the users gender and age range, a total of sixty three percent of users where male and the remaining thirty three percent female, the main age range of users who took the survey fitted between the ages of twenty one and twenty five with users aged between twenty six and thirty and fifteen and twenty also taking part.

My third question was if the user was aware of what aid is available for users who suffer from visual disabilities, the findings where that 81.8% of user did not know about this, showing that more needs to be done to spread awareness of aid on the web for users who suffer from visual disabilities, the remaining 18.2% of users who took the survey had knowledge of available aid, these lead onto the next question on what aid users knew about being available, the answers where screen readers and alt text used within screen readers.

I then moved onto asking if they thought there was more that could be done to aid users in the future and 90% said yes, again showing that more can be done to spread awareness and also to further improve the aid of programs and software that can be used to improve the experience for visually impaired users.

The final two questions touched upon if users who took the survey knew anyone who was visually impaired and if they had access to the web, 54.5% knew someone who was visually impaired and 71.4% of these had access to the web, showing that the web is accessible for these users easily.


PRP Artefact Two.

Screen reading on mobile phones.

Now I know my project said my project was based on web based screen readers I couldn’t pass this opportunity up, whilst researching into how screen readers are coded into websites, I came across a website called codefactory.es, so I scanned through the website and came across a program called mobile speak, which is, as you can guess a screen reader installed into a mobile phone, which at the moment is only available for windows mobile and Symbian os.

The software offers Braille support which works when the phone is connected to a connected to a Braille device with a refreshable Braille display, supports more than 30 languages, advanced support for phone Web Browsers, Built-in User Dictionaries to customize pronunciation, Support for Instant Messaging applications to chat with friends and colleagues (Fring on Symbian, MSN Messenger and Skype on Windows Mobile) and more.

I decided to put this is in my research as it shows that screen readers are expanding onto other devices as well as the web which means that there are definitely advances in the software and maybe the mobile screen reader will be available on other mobile platforms in the near future.

PRP Artefact Three

After concluding my tests on artefact three I had some interesting results, some of which where expected and some which were not, the artefact was a page that contained three images that displayed the same thing but featured three different descriptions, all of which are longer than the one before it.

Image one was the most chosen one as it features a short and simple description and is straight to the point, it also reads well through a screen reader and is clearly pronounced, and it is also relevant to the image and describes the key elements.

The second image was said to be done well as it contained quite a bit of information and gives you more description about the image, it also doesn’t work as it takes quite a while to be read out through a screen reader, this isn’t a good result as the user wouldn’t want that much information within an image description, this was also the case with image three, this image contained more information than the second image and also contained information that isn’t really needed within a description, this image when read through a screen reader took longer than the previous two to describe, this isn’t a good result and this is why this image was he least popular amongst the three.

Upon reading my results I have come to the conclusion that to make an effective website that contains imagery that is also accessible to visually impaired users must contain short and simple descriptions to describe the images that are featured within the website, this is important as only the key points of the image should be included and other information should be further included within the other sections of the information that is on the site.

PRP Artefact Four

Artefact four was an invisible page that featured links that could be tabbed through and read within a screen reader, the alt text provided descriptions of the links which were placed in random parts of the page, the user was to first use the mouse to find the links and then to use the tab key to do the same, the test used two free screen readers which were Thunder and NVDA, the site contains three pages with links placed in different sections of each page.

Firstly the user used the mouse to hover around the page and find the links with the pop up alt text description, upon completing this the results where that the description appeared quickly when hovered over and was shown for a good amount of time to be able to read it and to select the link to navigate through the site if the link was the desired one.

When being tabbed through using screen reader one, Thunder, the results show that the links were reads out clearly and featured good use of alt text, the screen reader also defines that the object is a link which is useful, it then follows on to giving out the alt text description.

When using NVDA the results appeared to be very similar to Thunder although NVDA was said to be clearer than Thunder, again it reads out that the object is a link and also says if you have previously visited the links or not.

My conclusion is that implying alt text into links is very useful if done correctly, this artefact gave me a clear indication of how alt text is used within links correctly and effectively and also how screen readers output links.

PRP Artefact Five

Artefact five was a comparison test between two free screen readers used in the previous two artefacts, the screen readers mentioned are NVDA and Thunder, both are used in Windows, the comparisons were tested in Internet Explorer Eight and also in Mozilla Firefox, the tests where filmed and featured how the screen readers handled large amounts of texts, how they described links and also how images descriptions were outputted, the results were then compared against each to give an indication of which open source screen reader was more suited for effective browsing.

Firstly the user opened up Thunder and then navigated to a created page for the testing, the user was told to tab through each section of the page and listen to the descriptions of the links, information and imagery, they then wrote down what they thought was good and bad about how the screen reader performed the tasks, the results came out quite well with some pros and cons about the screen reader, the pros were that the screen reader read out links well and also worked well with the information but when it came imagery the screen reader read out the image source name instead of the images alt text description, this wasn’t expected but clearly shows that the screen reader contains faults which need to be addressed, this displays that the screen reader would not be of effect to use to a disabled user.

NVDA was now ran thorough the same test and the results were perfect across the board, it clearly read out each link, image and information description correctly and shows that this certain screen reader is effective and user friendly, this also leads to be that this screen reader would be the preferred choice of open source screen readers for Windows.

PRP Artefact Six

The final artefact was a two page site that contains imagery, information and links all with alt text descriptions that can be tabbed through, by using the results and conclusions form my previous artefacts I was looking to create the site to be of maximum effect when used alongside a screen reader, the screen reader in use for this artefact was NVDA which was chosen due to the results shown in Artefact Five.

The idea for the testing was for a user to navigate the site and also to simply write down their thoughts on the links, information and image descriptions and if they were helpful towards them using the site successfully.

The results came out quite well with some positive and negative things to be said, this was useful as it gave me more information on what to change in the future within alt text descriptions used within my websites, the positives were that my links and information worked well and were useful to the user, the descriptions were clear and worked well with the screen readers, the imagery was hit and miss as some had a little to much information which wasn’t needed, the main issue was the banners as they were not relevant to the content of the website.

The screen reader used was clear and worked well with the site which enabled easy use of the site and allowed the user to understand the sites purpose.

Over the course of my personal research project I have learnt a number of things on how to put good use of alt text into my websites, this will be helpful in the future when making my sites accessible for the visually impaired.

PRP.

Colour changes to my client site

Screens of my client project so far.

Here is a screenshot of my home page on the web. (Firefox)



Here is a screenshot of my home page on the web. (IE8)



Here is my design in Dreamweaver design view.



This is my home page CSS.



This is the code that runs the home page.

Work for uni is progressing well..

Well, the client project is, PRP not so well, I'm a little stuck on ideas for Artefact 3 but I have plenty of time to get one thought up, shall be adding some more touches to Artefact 2 tomorrow and hoping to be done by Tuesday.

Client Project Update...

I have chosen my final design,but I am not revealing which one I have chosen until the project is finished, will keep updating the progress every two or three days.

Design Mock Ups. (Client)

Here is my first mock up of my ideas for my client project, the disco ball and name underneath will be done in 3D if i decided on using this idea and the disco ball will slowly rotate and have little flicks of light reflection as it rotates, the dates in the calender will be lightly filled with two colours, one indicating what dates are available and the other indicating dates that are not, once clicked this will open a pop up window showing the venues that are being played at for that month.



Took a more simple route with this design but after looking at it I find it really dull and boring so will not be making any variations of this design.




This design was influenced by a site I saw earlier whilst I was scanning the web, I liked the idea of a minimal style and bright colours, I have used colours that compliment each other as not to distract the eye whilst viewing the design.