Although apparently easier to deal with technically than images, issues with presentation of text had a high median severity rating (3 – major) and the highest frequency of all subcategories encountered by partially sighted users (157), accounting for more than 16% of problems encountered by partially sighted users. This shows that it is urgent that considerably more attention be devoted to designing text with
appropriate size, colour background and positioning.
Users encountered a substantial number of problems with text that they had difficulties to read due to inadequate presentation. In problems in this subcategory, users would somehow be able to change the presentation of text by changing colour contrast or the size. However, changing the settings would still result in a non-
satisfactory presentation, or the necessary changes would demand too much effort from users.
The most frequent cause of problems with presentation of text, accounting for nearly 46% of problems in this subcategory, was poor colour contrast between text and its background. The colour used by web designers did not have enough contrast with the background in the default presentation, or became unreadable when users applied special colour settings.
Inadequate font size was another frequent cause of problems, accounting for approximately 18% of problems in this subcategory. Users complained that the font size was still too small even after magnification. In the example shown in Figure 4.9, the exhibition of a sandwich menu was very small for users, even though a very high level of magnification was used with the user’s assistive technology. The problem, in this case, was due to the fact that the text was in PDF, and resizing had to be done on the PDF file reader as well as in the assistive technology, implying in more effort for users.
Figure 4.9 – Example of text of sandwich menu that is unreadable for partially sighted
101 101 Other cases include problems that occurred when resizing text implied in a
disarrangement of the screen, with overlaying other text. In Figure 4.10, an example is shown where the price of an object in a shop is superposed by its description, which is not shown in its entirety on the screen.
Figure 4.10 – Example of text that is not properly adjusted when enlarged and
superposes other text
Other causes of problems also include use of text in images with low resolution that became blurred when magnified, or presentation of text in more than one column, that made users spend more time panning with their screen magnifiers.
4.3.1.4
Navigation elements do not help users find what they
are seeking
Like for blind users, problems related to unhelpful navigation were critical to partially sighted users, with median severity rating 3 (major), and 78 instances, which accounted for 8.33% of all problems encountered by partially sighted users. Partially sighted users also found that the navigation elements were confusing and disorienting, and did not help them find the information they were seeking in their task.
Many partially sighted users spend a significant amount of time navigating in websites, especially when they needed to pan across different parts of the screen with high levels of magnification. Exploring different parts of a website by trial and error when navigation structures are not helpful can be very time consuming, and not finding content where expected can be very frustrating to those users.
In most cases when problems in this subcategory occurred, there were not specific problems with individual links available in the navigation. The reason for the problems was with the overall structure of the navigational elements, caused by a poorly designed
102 102 information architecture. In one example of such problem, users were looking for a
specific exhibit in a museum website. However, as shown in the illustration of the navigation bar in Figure 4.11, several different options seemed to be plausible to find this, such as “Visiting”, “What’s on”, “Explore” or “Research”. In fact, during the
evaluations, many users had to look at several of these options by trial and error, which meant a very time-consuming process for users.
Figure 4.11 – Example of navigation in the British Museum website – users did not
know what to follow to find a specific exhibit in the museum
4.3.1.5
Content not found in pages where expected
Partially sighted users encountered problems when they confidently followed a link to a page, but a piece of information that they expected to find there was missing. Those problems also had median severity 3 and 77 instances, accounting for 8.23% of the problems encountered by partially sighted users.
In most problems in this subcategory, users seemed to believe a given link was the right one to follow, but when they arrived at the page, it did not contain the content they wanted. The content was actually in another page different from that which many users believed was the right one. This was a very serious issue to partially sighted users. As many of those users had to pan around to see different parts of the screen due to their small viewport, they sometimes spent a lot of time double-checking the page they believe to have the content they believed to be there, just to make sure they had not missed the content.
In one example, users were looking for the names of staff members of the libraries network Copac. They found the link “Contact”, which they believed would have the list of contact names, but it only had the general contact information to the institution, as illustrated in Figure 4.12. The information about staff members was under “About”, not under Contact, as expected by users.
103 103
Figure 4.12 – Example of contact page from the Copac website that did not contain
names of staff, as expected by users
Similarly to the problems where users found that the navigation did not help them find what they were seeking, the main technical cause of problems in this subcategory was connected to the information architecture and organisation of websites. Users expected to find certain pieces of information in parts of the website that were different from that laid-out by the designers of the websites.