Provide a comparable experience

[iheni]

Strapline

Ensure your interface provides a comparable experience for all users, so people can accomplish tasks in a way that suits their needs without undermining the quality of the content.

Description

Whether out of circumstance, choice, or context people are diverse. As people use different approaches and tools to read and operate interfaces, what the interface offers each user should be comparable in both value and quality.

Examples

• Editorial for alternatives - Having a basic alternative, whether it's alt text, a transcript, audio description, or sign language, makes the content accessible but to be equivalent it needs to capture the essence of the original.
• Ergonomic features: Providing synchronized closed captions makes your video accessible. But making them customizable, color coded, and repositionable provides a more comparable experience.
• Notifications: Notifications that appear in an interface are visually obvious but require proactive discovery by screen reader users. A comparable experience for blind users, can be achieved by using a live region. The notification then requires no explicit action on the part of the user.

Examples not included

An alternative (alt text, transcript, audio description, sign language etc) may not be an equivalent experience for someone who has never had sight as colors, styles, visual descriptions may be meaningless.

[Heydon]

@iheni As stated elsewhere, I'm not sure we need to say 'disabled' in the descriptions. To be inclusive, different people of all sorts should be catered for, but not forgetting disabled people. Also a risk that 'disabled people' makes a very diverse group seem simple and uniform.

[iheni]

Agreed. This one needs work. Here are some suggestions:

• Aim for equivalence so people can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with content in a way that meets their needs.
• Aim for equivalence so people can experience content in a way that meets their needs.

Yep. Needs work.

[iheni]

@LJWatson Wondering if you have any thoughts on this one?

[IanPouncey]

Equivalent content and interactions should be part of the standard interface, not a separate "accessible version".

[Heydon]

Strapline

Interfaces should aim to be interoperable: any one element should be usable in a multitude of different ways, meeting the needs of different people at the same time.

Description

Developing separate interfaces or auxiliary features for interfaces to meet special cases is costly and time consuming, as well as diminishing the performance and maintainability of the underlying code. It's also based on the false premise that any one user falls predictably and consistently within just one group.

[iheni]

Examples:

• Audio description should only describe editorially significant visual content otherwise the experience may become undermined by describing redundant and distracting content.

[iheni]

People need to be able to experience a thing in a way that enables them to get the job done.

[iheni]

Issues we discussed:

• Massive table of updating stocks and shares for a visual representation. The work for a user to understand that table is almost impossible
• iOS
• Brighton Pav - audio guides for all users reused to blind and low vision visitors
• Audio data can be useful to convey information: NVDA install progress bar goes up and up to indicate loading. Helpful as you want to know where you are at.. Buts more complex audio tools, such as sound to convey financial data changing on the fly, may be too much to process.
• Don’t rely on assumptions
• Tactile graphics need some instruction/context so you can process it. The more complex a tactile graphic the more complex it is to process. Therefore there is a need for editorial to identify what the key info is.

Themes:

• Too much information (equivalence in some contexts) is not a good experience
• People need to be able to experience a thing in a way that enables them to get the job done.
• Different routes to the same experience

[Heydon]

Strapline

Users may consume an interface in different ways, but the value they glean from the interface should be similar.

[Heydon]

Description

Interfaces are provided for different purposes, such as entertainment, information, and for completing tasks. Although users take different approaches and use different tools to read and operate interfaces, what the interface offers each user should be comparable in terms of both quantity and quality. In pursuit of this end, some editorial creativity may be required to translate between mediums — such as audio versus visual.

[iheni]

Maybe what we are after is 'equitable' rather than 'equivalent':

• Equitable = impartial or reasonable; fair; just: an equitable decision
• Equivalent = equal in value, measure, force, effect, significance, etc

'Equitable' encapsulates the idea of being 'reasonable' without the expectation of an exact alternative experience which 'equivalent' implies. Having said that, given the baggage of the word 'equivalent' shifting to 'equitable' may seem like splitting hairs.

So, having thought out loud above...I like Heydon's use of 'comparable' over 'equitable'; it's easier to read/parse, and falls better into the plain English bucket. The definition of comparable works well for what we are trying to say (italics my own):

• able to be likened to another; similar.
• of equivalent quality; worthy of comparison.

Principle name

Provide a comparable experience

Strapline

Ensure your interface provides a comparable experience for all users, so people can accomplish tasks in a way that suits their needs without undermining the quality of the content.

Description

Whether out of circumstance, choice or context people are diverse. As people use different approaches and tools to read and operate interfaces, what the interface offers each user should be comparable in both value and quality.

[Heydon]

Examples:

• Judicious audio description: For an audio description of a televised drama, you only include information pertinent to the narrative. Describing everything in frame would be equivalent to examining it all visually, and very distracting
• The visual pun: An image serves as a visual pun, with the hope of amusing your audience. Describing it literally makes it unfunny so an equivalent joke is provided as the image's alternative text.

[iheni]

Examples

• Providing synchronized closed captions makes CC compliant and accessible but making them customizable, color coded, repositionable etc makes them a more equivalent experience.
• A text alternative (alt text, transcript, audio description etc) may not be an equivalent experience for someone who has never had sight as colors, styles, visual descriptions may be meaningless.

[Heydon]

Harmonized examples

• Different approaches for different mediums: An image serves as a visual pun, with the hope of amusing your audience. Describing it literally makes it unfunny so an equivalent joke is provided as the image's alternative text.
• Ergonomic features: Providing synchronized closed captions makes your video CC compliant. But making them customizable, color coded and repositionable helps make the experience of viewing the video comparably enjoyable for those relying on captioning.

[Heydon]

• Notifications: When a notification pops up visually during the operation of an interface, knowing it's there is as simple as seeing it arrive. A comparable experience aurally/non-visually/for blind users, is achieved by incorporating a live region. Both forms, visual and non-visual, of the notification require no explicit action on the part of the user to be consumed.

[iheni]

Notifications: Notifications that appear in an interface are visually obvious but require proactive discovery by screen reader users. A comparable experience for blind users, can be achieved by using a live region. The notification then requires no explicit action on the part of the user.

[iheni]

Closing the original principle.