Websites & Users with Visual Impairments (Lab 1 , Part 3 , Question1 , 3, 5)

The goal of designing any webpage or website is to allow the users to navigator easily and efficiently through the website, while also allowing the user to complete their objective ie, buy something online, read a news article etc. One audience that websites have to be aware of are users with visual impairments. This can range from someone who cannot see at all to someone who has partial vision loss. A statistic from the World Health Organisation estimaties that in 2014 , 285 million people worldwide fall into the catagory of visual impaired. Therefore it is not something website designers and web developers should ignore.

The first website I analysed was the site I am currently using to blog, https://www.blogger.com/. I analysed it from a signed in account point of view. The main downside in my opinion was small font size. If one was visually impaired, one may get confused with the small font. Some of the small font is highlighted in blue tone implying that it is 'important' or 'significant' when in my opinion is it just a design error. To their credit, the two main things you need to do are 'New Blog' and the big orange button of a pen indicating where the user can create a new post in thier blog.

The second site I analysed was the CNN homepage http://edition.cnn.com/. Straight away I felt like I was being bombarded by photos, videos, tabs and pop ups. Now all this videos and pop ups are news related, these features of the  homepage mad it feel like a 'dodgy' website you accidently click on and instantly click away from. All that was my experiecne and I think I have good eye sight. Even though the font sizes are big and there are multiple photos and headline, it just feels a soup of information. I cant imagine any visually impaired person efficiently using that website. I am hunam though I could be wrong. My suggestion, change your website that you get your news from.

Finally I looked the Amazon homepage http://www.amazon.co.uk/. I like amazon. I use amazon a lot to purchase things. I will not be bias, but I can't promise. Amazon has a search tool bar (similar to Google) in which you can search for any item that they may sell or dispatch. Done. Well it really is that easy , even for visually impaired in my opinion. The searcg bar is right at the very top of the screen so it is easy to find. Whether you love or hate Amazon's 'suggestions' that are littered on the bottom part of the screen under the search bar, from a visual perspective, that photos are big, easy to identify and easy to find. Amazon gets the thumbs up from me!

I then completed an online questionaire about the three websites in question. My results from the questionaire did not change greatly from my original analysis of the websites.

Sources:

https://www.blogger.com/

http://edition.cnn.com/

http://edition.cnn.com/

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/