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Keyboard accessibility is one of the most important aspects of web accessibility. There are a whole host of reasons why certain users will find mouse usage difficult or impossible. Some users may have no use or limited use of their hands or arms and rely on the keyboard or alternative input devices to navigate websites. Blind people using screen reading software almost exclusively rely on keyboard navigation.

Recently, in my role of auditing websites for accessibility, I have come across a number of websites that make keyboard navigation impossible, because critical sign-posting allowing users to see where they are on the page are missing.

When keyboard users navigate websites, they jump from link to link using the tab key. They can see where they are on the page because the link with the focus has a dotted border around it. These borders should be visible by default, like they are on the BBC website but on a number of websites I have visited, they have been removed. Maybe the web designer considered them ‘ugly’ and removed them (this can be done by setting the physical appearance of the ‘outline-style’ property to ‘none’) because they spoilt his or her design of the page, not realising the huge impact this has on users with disabilities.

Dotted borders on the BBC website appear
around links that have the current keyboard focus.

The simplest way to ensure that a visual indicator is present is to do nothing and let the dotted borders appear by default. However, these dotted borders are not always easy to see, especially if background colours are being used. To make them obvious, CSS techniques can be used to display a different background colour when the link receives the focus. This is a great technique and can be seen in action on the Easy Slideshare website.

Links with the current keyboard focus can be made
more obvious by adding a different background colour. 

A clear and distinct visual indicator is essential for sighted users that rely on keyboard navigation. Without them, websites become impossible to use as users are not able to see where they are on a page.

The rise of the power of user generated content is leading organisations to offer new ways of enticing participation, and an innovative example I will be following is that of Simon Seeks.

There are plenty of sites vying for participation, in the form of user generated content: some offer to pay up front for the content, while others hope that by linking into other successful social networking sites, that they will boost their usage, and a confident few are content to start by carefully seeding, hoping that the community will grow, simply through brand, interest or both.

However Simon Seeks offers rewards based on both conversion and loyalty. Registered users of the site write reviews. If their review leads to other users booking a holiday, they are then given financial rewards back. Conversion and loyalty are not new, but it’s a model of encouragement that I have never seen before.

I guess the hope is that if reviewers are rewarded with something in context, it should lead them to have another experience, and in return, for the site can hope for loyalty, and more crucially, another review posted of that new experience.

Can a bad customer experience with one brand affect another brand?

Holiday season; I excitedly went online to Expedia, found decent fares for my flight to Thailand and proceeded to the booking page. Everything went smoothly until I reached the confirmation page: instead of getting the much anticipated confirmation number, I received a sad “Sorry, we were unable to make your reservation” message. Ok, fair enough; I told myself that I must have had mistyped my bank details and decided to try again.

Following this slight disappointment, I went onto my online banking to make sure that a lack of provision on my account hadn’t been the reason of the failure. Once logged in, the view of my statement petrified me: I had actually been debited of the amount of the flight I was trying to book. I must have sworn harder than for my internet problem.   I had no booking but the money had gone.

Upon calling Expedia, I was immediately reassured and told to contact my bank, ask for a fax number and a representative’s name, so that Expedia could fax the bank a cancellation order. Basically, my money had flown out of my account to land into a mysterious buffer zone between my bank and Expedia, waiting to be authorised. What I did not know at the time, was that if the retailer doesn’t claim the money, (which was the case with Expedia as the booking had not gone through) the pending transaction would cancel out after a few days and the money would return onto my account.

What follows now is a joke of call centre support:

• Phoned up the ‘current account’ service of my bank for the fax number (20 minute wait)
• Told “in the wrong service department” and transferred to the ‘fraud division’
• Another friendly but unhelpful support person (another 20 minute wait) told me I still wasn’t in the right service and the operator told me “Sir, I’ll transfer you to online banking operations”.
• From then on, every 5 minutes, the lad would pause the increasingly annoying waiting tune to announce me that he was trying to jump the queue and connect me to somebody.
• Another 20 minutes of this comedy (I was 1 hour on the phone at this point), told that nobody seemed to be working anymore as no-one was picking up the phone. Out of curiosity, I asked him for the direct number of that department.
• Called direct and received the automated response “This service is no longer available. Please call xxx for online banking operations”. Guess what Gordon Ramsay would have said at that point.

After blaming loudly and angrily my bank’s internal communication system, I phoned up the new number, waited a tiny bit, got to talk to someone, got a name and fax number, call back Expedia and eventually got my money back three days later.

So what’s the morale of the story…? Did this epic experience affect my perception of Expedia? Yes, a little bit as I now fear the same issue to happen again. However, the bad online user experience was offset by a professional, quick and friendly service on the phone.

Did this affect my perception of the bank: yes a lot, as it felt like no-one on the phone knew what they were talking about (I actually forgave them the waiting time). The incompetence of a few ones completely discredited the seriousness of the bank. However, I went to my local branch on the following working day and had my distrust of the bank blown away by a professional and very capable clerk.

Hopefully for them, neither of these two brands relied on one channel only to convey their image. But this story really demonstrates is how a travel agency almost made my bank lose a customer.

Not one to follow the hype or emerging trend, I was still intrigued by why anyone would queue from 5.30am to buy something, namely the new iPhone which launched last week in the UK. On catching up with my brother-in-law last weekend, an avid iPhone user (and essentially all things Apple), I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. He proudly pulled out his phone and handed it to me, initially I was amazed he would trust his new prised possession in my hands, what if I ‘broke’ something by pressing the wrong button? It would seem that it’s not possible.

I initially went and tried out what is usually the first thing I use a mobile for, sending a text, upon realising how simple that was, I wanted to know how useful some of the applications really are - this is where it got exciting, I could fill a page on the 30 minutes spent ‘playing’ on the phone, the most useful apps for me are anything to do with travel, getting from A to B with minimum fuss - the routes can be displayed in different formats, map, satellite, text with built in compass, and the ease of use is paramount, as someone who uses the internet frequently to plan my journey, I was amazed that it was so much better on the iPhone. Not one normally for games, I spent a good ten minutes ‘driving’ (the phone acts as the steering wheel and it moves extremely well) as for playing the synthsiser, who knew I was so musical?! We even shot a short video, did a quick edit and uploaded it to You Tube within minutes.

Basically I was hugely impressed with the iPhone, it’s slick, sleek style which fits comfortably in the hand, the large clear screen, sound quality, sheer speed and the most useful applications that simply provide a cleaned up version of the internet! A great customer experience and for the first time I can see where the cost of an item like this actually holds it’s value. The iPhone is not only pretty and fun, but useful too.

I recently downloaded a free trial of Axure. After hearing so many good things about it from colleagues I decided I must try it. After entering my email address as requested I unticked the e-marketing box out of pure habit just as I was scanning the text. After unticking it my eyes reached the last few words ‘about one email a month’. This was enough to make me stop and reconsider. While part of me would like to know about updates and news what I didn’t want was to be inundated with emails and my natural instinct in all these situations is to opt out. But once a month or thereabouts I can cope with. So I reticked the box. Including that little piece of extra information has meant that Axure has the means for ongoing communication with me. Clever work.

I signed up to Waterstone’s card a couple of months ago (I was caught off guard at the counter when asked if I wanted to sign up.) I said ‘Yes’, instantly regretting it as I knew I would never use it. If you use the card when you buy books, you get points; on top of that, you get subscribed to their newsletter when you sign up - all pretty standard stuff. After a couple of months of receiving these emails, I decided that I wasn’t particularly interested in receiving them anymore. And this is when this ordinary experience started to go astray. After clicking on the link to unsubscribe, I was presented with a page that allows you to ‘manage everything to do with your email subscriptions’ – their words. However, in truth, this page only lets you sign up to receive more emails or change the email address to which you receive the mail – not exactly enabling you to manage everything to do with your email subscriptions.
After spending a couple of minutes looking for the unsubscribe option, I gave up, instead opting to mark the newsletter as junk mail and let the spam checker take care of it for me. I have since come across another mailing list which gave me food for thought. It employs a different tact - it gives the user a choice whether they want to unsubscribe or try the emails for another couple of emails – the number determined by the user. Empowering the user in this way is more likely to keep customers happy and in doing so, retain them. In addition to the Waterstone’s loyalty card that I do not use, their emails are now going straight in to my junk mail - which effectively closes the door on any future correspondence from them. And although this experience hasn’t put me off Waterstone’s completely, I believe that as important as it is to get the user experience right when opting in, it is equally important to get it right when you are opting out, otherwise you risk annoying customers and shutting them out for good.

By all accounts the first e-Commerce Expo in the North of England was a huge success. Visitor numbers topped 850 which was 40% more than anticipated by the organisers. Visitors were delighted with the convenience of attending a high quality conference programme, and meeting key e-commerce suppliers at the exhibition in Manchester. The organisers have stated that next year - yes there will be a next year; they will be significantly increasing seating capacities! This is good news as the Keynote room and both theatres were oversubscribed for most sessions including mine. The theatre I was in could seat 75, however; all seats were taken plus more than 10 people were standing at the back. I was on at the same time as the IMRG and Bazzarvoice, so was happy my room was packed with so many visitors willing to sacrifice listening to industry advocates and global e-Commerce suppliers to listen to the ShopDirect / Foviance case study.

My client Sam Barton - Head of Content and Interaction Design, attended my session representing ShopDirect and he was delighted with the presentation, his words were “It was excellent and certainly made ShopDirect stand out from the crowd”‘. He liked it so much that he has taken the presentation from me to distribute internally. I have since had several requests for a copy from the event organisers based on requests they have had and they keep flooding in. Most recent feedback: “Quick note to say thank you very much for a brilliant presentation at ecomm North Expo. Have to say, I found all tracks in theatre 2 that day to be very good, but most had only to sell their own company, whereas you covered both Foviance & ShopDirect and did that very well. Good stuff.

You can view the presentation below and I welcome any comments, alternatively you can send me an e-mail.

Looking forward to next year, Arthur

I recently received a DVD featuring video and photographical highlights from a friend’s wedding day. As much fun was experienced by all during the celebrations, I eagerly loaded my DVD player in the anticipation of spotting myself and my friends amongst the crowd. However, it was not to be as I was defeated at the first hurdle; I couldn’t understand how to navigate around the media. The top level menus were faint images of roses (I think!) and featured against a moving blurry background of rotating flower bouquets, in addition, the feedback for selection was non-existent and the labelling incomprehensible.

The poor usability of my friend’s wedding DVD could be forgiven as the DVD was compiled by the groom as a cost saving exercise using free software, however commercial DVD manufacturers can not use the same excuse. This experience led me to review various DVDs in my collection.

From exploring the first few, it was obvious that from a usability point of view DVD menus are generally poor - commonly a case of placing aesthetics over function. In other words, designers appear to view this medium as a creative arena where no rules apply.

In many cases, navigating menu options from simply playing the film to selecting individual chapters was frequently difficult and often frustrating. On one DVD, I drilled down within the special features section and the only way I could return to a start point was to reject the disk and reload the DVD!

As a result of these experiences, here are some suggestions for better presented and usable DVD menus:

• Keep the animations and menus within their own distinct regions on the screen. (Nothing is more frustrating than trying to assess feedback after making a selection against a rolling or busy background.)
• Ensure feedback is obvious e.g. highlight the current selection.
• Clearly label menu items; ensure the labels are intuitive. ‘Chapters’ are chapters, don’t reinvent the wheel - people just want to watch the film and the extras (not spend value leisure time working out the meaning of a label or a new way of navigating around a DVD.)
• Remember that users will be using one of the most frustrating selection devices invented by man, the remote. So don’t hide options and require the equivalent of a mouse over movement to highlight menu options.
• Always provide an escape route; there should be no dead ends when navigation down ‘levels’ within a DVD menu. For example, there should be direct mapping between the remote control’s rocker buttons and target operations, i.e. the up/down/left/right movement, should be direct and immediate.
• A user should always be able to return to a logical start point. (Nothing is more frustrating than having to eject a DVD and start the loading process all over again.)

Ask yourself this question, how many times do you want to watch the opening credits of a movie when exploring a DVD?