User Videos – An Accessibility Angle

Over the last few months WP dev lessbloat has done a series of videos where he has invited in ‘real-life’ users to try out various features of the WordPress backend – and has videoed the experience.

I’ve watched many of these videos and read the transcripts of the interactions and they are a really great insight into usability, and assumptions that developers make about how much users understand about what’s expected of them. The most recent one is at: https://make.wordpress.org/ui/2013/01/09/two-more-menus-user-tests-focusing-on-this/

I’ve often thought that it would be quite revealing if somehow we could produce a series of videos of blind and motor impaired users trying out key bits of the admin area. These would highlight the accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) issues perhaps more than words on a page could, and could constitute a powerful benchmark on which to base future improvements.

Does anyone else think this might be useful? And if so, how could we go about making some?

#testing, #usability, #video