Are you thinking about how easy it is for people to consume your websites content ?
So I’m approaching the end of another week of working in partnership with Snook Digital.
We, with luck, will have two customer websites going live next week which is in itself very exciting. But what’s more interesting is the difference in style and format that the two clients have adopted; and how that is influenced by the potential consumers of the websites content.
Back in the day the directors at Be Astute were responsible for running a large work based learning provider; how people learn and consume information is very much in the Be Astute DNA.
So here’s something to contemplate on a Friday. How appropriate is your website for your target market ?
The Statistics
Bear with me there are quite a lot but I’m going somewhere with this.
Over the last twenty something years the directors at Be Astute have spent a lot of time working with the 60% of students in the UK that don’t get a strong GCSE pass in English or Maths. The UK Department of Education considers a strong pass to be Grade 5 and above.
In simple terms if you run a business targeting the general public 60% of your customer base will have less than Grade 5 English reading level (O’ level Grade C to those of us of more advanced age).
Think about that for a minute.
Add to that the number of people in the UK that don’t speak English as a first language (though presumably this stat overlaps with the one above) which according to ONS was 7.7 percent in 2011.
There is more; 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some form of colour blindness. That’s about 3 million men in the UK who will struggle to read your website if you get the colours wrong. If you have no idea what being colour blind actual implies have a look at the sources at the end of this article.
It goes on. According to the NHS there are almost 2 million people in the UK that are living with some form of sight loss with around 360,000 registered as blind or partially sighted….
Then there is Dyslexia. 10% of the UK population has some form of Dyslexia; that’s 7million people.
The sources for these statistics are at the end of this article if you don’t believe me.
So that’s a lot of statistics what can we conclude ?
A lot of people that want to buy from you will have difficulty for one reason or another consuming your web content.
or to put it another way;
a) Just because you think you website is cool doesn’t mean it will look cool to everyone else.
b) and more importantly; you could be shutting out a significant slice of your customer base.
What can I do about it ?
It turns out there is quite a lot you can do; and given that we are potentially talking about a big chunk of your target market you really should be.
Lets Talk About Reading Level
Back in the day we would target instructions to learners at level 1 English functional skills level. I’ve borrowed the quote below from a Functional Skills English Level 2 exam. You need to think about who your audience is and what level of complexity they will easily understand in the text you put in front of them.
The text below is actually designed for students going from Level 1 to Level 2.
“The Sally Port Inn situated in Old Portsmouth is home to the ghost of the infamous Buster Crabb. In April 1956, Buster spent his last night at this old pub just before he inexplicably disappeared for good. Buster, a British Royal Navy frogman and diver, was hired by MI6 to spy on a Soviet ship docked at Portsmouth Dockyard. Crabb disappeared after diving into the harbour to complete his spying mission.”
So if your website includes words like; “insatiable, inveterate, umbrage, sycophant, panacea, morose” you are not being as erudite as you think you are.
That’s unless you are running a shop selling English text books to University lecturers.
Make Your Website Easier To Read
Being easy to read isn’t just about the words on the page its about the way those words are laid out.
This article was prompted by Dr Louise Karwowski’s piece on fenews.co.uk on supporting neuro-diverse learners; those learners who have issues with Non-verbal memory.
Hang on a minute I thought we weren’t using long words …..
Non-verbal memory is —>
“Nonverbal memory is the ability to code, store, and recover information about faces, shapes, images, songs, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. Nonverbal memory is what makes it possible to retain and remember content without words (neither written or spoken)."
Dr Karwowski identifies 3 key strategies for helping people navigate learning and those can easily be applied to website design;
Simplify abstract concepts and relate then to real world scenarios —> Make you E-Commerce shopping cart look, and sound like a shopping cart ?
Use a consistent visual structure —> Keep a consistent layout on the page and don’t put the important stuff in different locations on different pages on your site. If you are going to have a shopping cart Icon top left on the home page make sure it is there for the rest of the pages as well.
Clearly outline learning objectives and aims —> Which I guess would translate in website terms to have call to actions so its clear what the site offers the user and how to access it. Also known as big buttons that say things like “Buy Now”.
How Do We Help Dyslexics ?
Similarly you can do things to make your website easier to read for Dyslexics;
Include a sans serif font - one without the extra curly bits for example Arial.
Go for a larger text size - 12 or 14 point fonts.
Don’t use italics - you can emphasis things with bold text.
Left justify your text and keep the lines and sentences short. 60-70 characters per line.
Make use of Icons to give visual que’s -> back to the shopping cart analogy again.
There is a suggestion that an off white or pale blue background with dark text is easier to read.
This list is from the User Zoom website.
I particularly liked their simulation of what dyslexics see -> which this gif presents.
What About Our Colour Palette ?
How we use colour images and space on a website makes a huge difference to how easy your potential clients find it to read; especially if they are colour blind.
Usabilla has some good examples of good and bad practice including;
Bad colour combinations;
Green & Red
Green & Brown
Blue & Purple
Green & Blue
Light Green & Yellow
Blue & Grey
Green & Grey
Green & Black
You can also use texture to supplement/enhance contrast.
Another example of good practice would be the use of icons next to key elements within the site.
Have a cart symbol for the cart rather than the word Checkout.
Back to the check out analogy. You need to use images and graphics to support the colour and text on your website.
Supporting People With Impaired Vision
So if you target a more mature audience you are more likely to have a high percentage of potential customers with visual issues. That might be anything from needing reading glasses to significant vision loss or blindness.
Things to think about apart from those mentioned in the previous sections include;
Is your site assessible to people using a screen reader ?
A screen reader is piece of software that will read the text on a screen as a user scrolls down.
So for instance can your site be read by Microsoft Narrator ? Remember the narrator needs to have something to read out. So if you have an image on the screen you need to make sure the meta tags that Narrator reads are populated so that the software can tell you the image is of a “small white cat“ or “tin of baked beans”.
Make sure your readers can magnify the text.
Your website plays nicely with the functionality within Windows and Mac OS that allow you to blow up the size of the screen image.
Make sure you can tab around the screen or use keyboard shortcuts. Using a mouse requires a level of hand to eye coordination that many people don’t have.
Make sure the navigation around the site will actually work with a keyboard. When we develop we use a mouse to select from drop lists and click buttons. If those components are not assessible the potential customer won’t be able to add the tin of beans to their shopping basket….
…AND THATS ANOTHER SALE LOST !!!!!
Why the picture of the train ?
Look at the texture on the platform. If visually impaired people can navigate the underground then finding their way around your website should be a walk in the park …
To Conclude
This article only really scratches the surface of the subject.
There are a couple of things to take away;
Its not actually that hard to do and the end result shouldn’t detract from the overall look of your website -> in many ways it will improve the usability.
We are talking about a significant segment of the consumer base that you may be shutting out of your site. A group of people that have money that they want to spend with you if only they can figure out how.
By presenting the world with a website that is not assessable to all you are saying something about your companies values……. something that in these more enlightened times counts for quite a lot with the public.
You wouldn’t open a physical shop that wasn’t assessible to someone in a wheel chair, why would you do the same thing with a website ?
Bill/March 2021 - updated March 8th
Sources:
English as a second language in the UK stats : https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/articles/languageinenglandandwales/2013-03-04#:~:text=While%207.7%20per%20cent%20of,speak%20English%20at%20all2.
Sight Loss source : https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vision-loss/#:~:text=In%20the%20UK%2C%20there%20are,as%20blind%20or%20partially%20sighted.
Colour Blindness source : https://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/#:~:text=Colour%20Blindness,-What%20is%20colour&text=Colour%20(color)%20blindness%20(colour,most%20of%20whom%20are%20male.
Dyslexia source : https://www.cache.org.uk/news-media/dyslexia-the-facts
Buster Crab text sample : https://www.skillsworkshop.org/sites/skillsworkshop.org/files/resources/e3l2hauntedportsmouth.pdf
Non-Verbal reasoning definition : https://www.cognifit.com/science/cognitive-skills/nonverbal-memory#:~:text=Nonverbal%20memory%20is%20the%20ability,(neither%20written%20or%20spoken).
Dr Louise Karwowski’s piece on fenews.co.uk on supporting neuro-diverse learners : https://www.fenews.co.uk/featured-article/63621-how-to-support-neurodiverse-learners-2-non-verbal-memory?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin
User Zoom helping people with Dyslexia : https://www.userzoom.com/ux-library/five-ways-to-make-usable-websites-for-people-with-dyslexia/
User Billa colour blindness examples : https://usabilla.com/blog/how-to-design-for-color-blindness/