Over the last few years, it has become much easier for people in Australia (and many similar countries) to go online. The relative cost of computers and internet connection has fallen significantly, and now free internet access is available in many libraries, community centres and social spaces. However, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that not everyone can participate in this online revolution; a combination of geographical, financial, psychosocial, physical and cognitive factors means there is still a great gap between the digital haves and have-nots.
The total number of internet users is increasing all the
time, but perhaps more important is the increased diversity of people who are
online. It appears however, that many website owners and developers are either reluctant,
or unable, to make sites that cater to the needs of these different sections of
the community.
Two projects compared
In 2007, I was asked to test the usability of a website for
people who were homeless or in public housing. (It was expected the site would
be primarily accessed from computers and/or kiosks in government offices and
welfare organisations.) Five years later, in 2012, I had an opportunity to test
another site that had been prepared for a target audience who were similarly
marginalised in terms of education and internet experience. Most of the test
participants for the two sites had lower-level reading abilities and very
limited access to computers when compared to the general community. (For
reasons of privacy and client confidentiality I cannot provide specific
details.)
While all the 2007 test participants had used the internet
at least once, the amount of use was generally very limited with only 28%
reporting they used the internet for 5 hours a week or more. However, after
being introduced to the test-site they appeared to be genuinely interested in
using it to find information and actively explored the various navigation
options, and most appeared to develop an understanding of the site navigation
system with relative ease. Comments from participants included:
I just love using the computer – I didn’t realise there was
so much you could do.
I thought it was tricky at the beginning because there is
all these different sections to look at for where to go (for information), but
it’s good.
As might be expected, all the test subjects in the 2012
project had greater opportunities to access the web than those in 2007. 50% of
the participants reported using the internet every day and only 20% said they
used it once a week or less. Most went online via computers owned by family
members and friends, and/or with computers and free internet access provided by
various community centres.
All participants for the 2012 review were recruited on the
basis that they had used the internet before, but several maintained they had
never used the web even though as one commented, “… but I use Facebook all the
time to keep in touch.” For most of the others, web use, other than Facebook,
was restricted to finding specific information (almost exclusively) via Google
or visiting one or two other regular sites, usually to obtain sporting results.
Changes in web understanding and behaviour
Compared to the 2007 participants, those in 2012 appeared to
have less interest, or more difficulty, in learning the basic concepts of
website navigation. Several were confused by the common navigation terms “Home”
and “About”, and tended to see these terms as relating directly to themselves
or their situation, comments included:
Home is that Australia or where you live?
Is Home something to do with the home you came from?
What is About? Is that about the information you are looking
for.
What’s the difference between Home and About?
This apparent decline in the ability to understand, or
willingness to learn, the navigation systems common to many sites may not be
confined to novice web users or people with lower-level reading skills like
those involved in the 2012 project. Instead, an emerging ‘Facebook effect’ may
help explain why some regular web users today are less likely to participate in
the exploratory, web-surfing behaviour of the past.
Facebook effect
Facebook recently announced its one billionth account; that
is a lot of people, even if all these accounts are do not represent separate
individuals. On Facebook (and other social networking sites such as Linkedin)
focus is on the individual and their friends, and the navigations systems
reflect this focus with the link Home taking the user back to their first page,
or Wall.
It is possible that the growing use of social-networking
sites may be contributing to a general decline in how well some web users
understand the basic structure and navigation systems of sites. And, this process
is likely to be exacerbated by the increasing use of application-based
interfaces for a wide range of web activities ranging from banking to train
timetables.
Googlefication
Another possible reason for the change in web behaviour over
the five years between these two projects is the growing reliance on Google to
find information.
Over the years, I have noticed that many web users are
either “surfers” or “searchers”. Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule,
and all of us probably indulge in both at times, but it seems that when seeking
information some people are more likely to surf from site to site and use the
navigation within sites, whereas with others the first inclination is to
search.
Google has become the colossus of search engines. In 2004, Google
accounted for less than 50% or all search engine use and the next most popular
at the time, Yahoo, was at 26%. But by 2012, 83% of searchers use Google, with
Yahoo a very distant second at just 6%. (PEW ‘Search engine use over time’)
Google now logs about 2 billion search requests a day, from
approximately 300 million people, and for an increasing number of people Google
is becoming the standard entry point to pages deep within websites. Why bother
learning how to use a site to find what you want when Google will do it for
you? To quote one recent test participant:
I normally just type the words in Google and it comes up. I
always select one of the top results, because if I type a good question it will
be there.
Conclusion
It seems to me, that for at least for some sections of the
web community, the mental model they have of the web toady may be very
different to the one they had a few years ago. This could be contributing to an
impaired understanding of the structure of conventional sites, and difficulty
in using the navigation systems they contain.
At the same time, an increasing number of web users are not
using internal information retrieval mechanisms to locate information within a
site, turning instead to external search engines (mainly Google) as a way of
providing quick and direct access to resources deep within sites.
A combination of this growing reliance on Google, and the
suggested ‘Facebook effect’ may mean that it is time to reconsider some basic
usability and accessibility principals, and the potential impact it could have
for web users with cognitive impairments and/or limited internet experience.
Furthermore, I believe it may have more general implications for WCAG 2, in
particular, “Guideline 2.4 Navigable: Provide ways to help users navigate, find
content, and determine where they are.”
In a practical sense I think there are a number of issues
that need to be considered:
Should we continue to use common navigation labels like
“Home” and “About”? Depending on the primary audience for a site, perhaps we
should be more specific, for example “[Organisation name]” and “About Us” or
“About [organisation name]”.
Perhaps we should pay more attention to Success Criteria
2.4.8 (Location: Information about the user’s location within a set of Web pages
is available.), and associated Technique G65 about the use of breadcrumbs. This
Success Criteria is at level AAA and so often ignored, but since users are
increasingly going directly to internal site pages maybe more emphasis should
be placed on helping them determine where they are within a site.
In WCAG 2 the use of metadata is strongly advocated, but
this is mainly from the perspective of helping people find conforming alternate
versions of pages or content (Appendix C). Perhaps we could also use metadata
to communicate the location of primary versions of content within the site
structure in a way that is machine readable.
And finally, the art of Search Engine Optimisation, dark or
not: While the SEO marketing imperative
is to get the highest possible ranking for an organisation in search engine
results, maybe it is time for a slight shift in focus towards also providing
users with more help in locating information within sites.
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