I’m going to do a full writeup/case study, but as I’ve been dealing with PDF remediation lately for an ebook project:
Multiple methods help immensely.
This goes for navigation on a website, to contact information methods, to information. A snazzy print design might look terrible when converted to a webpage; I encountered this situation early on with the Pathfinder 1e character sheets. A “manuscript paper” texture on the printed page looked in theme, but it also caused some problems. One of those problems was that when converting the original printed character sheets to Roll20, the conversion meant that there were originally over 40 colors on that sheet. Another problem was issues of font and table legibility; even with the ability to resize text, it quickly became difficult when words that were legible on most of the background texture encountered some of the “dips” in the texture meant to emulate the variation in handmade paper. At the time, Paizo also had another variation of character sheets; while in stark black and white, it was at least another method to access and group this information used by players of the Pathfinder game.
In a corporate sense, the “multiple methods” principle can be easily examined through navigation options or contact methods. If you only have an email contact, what happens when emails change and bounce unread, or the maintainer of that email leaves the company? If the person does not necessarily have their own email – younger and older folks especially can encounter this – it can be a problem, or if they need to talk to a person about a subscription, a technical bug, or time-sensitive issues. We’re seeing this with software and social media applications over the years as well. If the only contact you had with someone was via Twitter, and everyone you knew has since moved away from that platform – how can you find them again? What about the ending of support for Skype? And so forth.
About 2-3 methods provided by default seem to be the sweet spot. Breadcrumb navigation as well as a main menu, for example. Or having the most frequently visited links in their own section along with a standard full navigation menu, for quick reference. Phone number AND email for businesses, sometimes the business address also – some now are also implementing a chatbot for quick contact information. Obviously this depends on the business, data privacy, and if they have multiple addresses (such as branch offices) as well. But providing multiple methods is an easy way to improve accessibility, and can be done on the web, social media platforms, and more – a great way to get involved in improving accessibility, even if your resources are minimal!
Leave a Reply