Usability and Accessibility for Desktop Applications

Question

Hi,

I am about to start developing a desktop application, and I am interested in making the application both usable and accessible for end users. Can anyone suggest online resources that offer guidance for developing usable desktop applications? In particular, I would be interested in learning about how to test desktop applications for usability. I am aware of several tools to validate HTML for accessibility; how could you test a desktop application for accessibility?

Thanks, MagicAndi.

Answer 1

I read through the entire Introduction to Apple Human Interface Guidelines, and it was not to my loss. Rumor has it that similar guidelines for MS Windows and Gnome are excellent, too, but I haven't read those.

Wikipedia has interesting pointers to usability. The single best (short) piece of literature I've seen on usability is "Don't make me think" by Steven Krug, with a focus on Web Usability.

As for Accessibility, I haven't read through all of it, but from small exerpts I blieve that real experts have written WIA-ARIA, the W3C take on accessibility.

I forgot where, but these are hints I've learned on how to test for accessibility:

• Buy a screenreader and try to use your app with that
• Put on glasses that are not yours (or take yours off) and find your way through the app
• Try to handle the your App with an imprecise substitute for a mouse, to simulate disabilities of the hand. E.g., try using your app with a trackball, or with a mouse on a reflecting surface.
• Turn the sound very silent or off
• Use your app with one hand only.
• Set your screen to black and white (to check that contrast suffices)

That's all I can come up with now.

Answer 2

I can answer from a MS centric point of view, although some of the tools mentioned should work for other languages that run under Windows.

First there are two open source options on CodePlex that you can run against your applications to verify that you have the building blocks in place for accessibility AccChecker and UI Automation Verify.

You should also use a screen reader to verify your accessibility, in my experience a good one that works with Windows and WPF applications is NVDA Screen Reader.

For measuring luminosity ratios of UI elements I like Colour Contrast Analyzer v 2.2

Microsoft also provides guidance with their Accessibility Labs and Sarah Ford has a really good article providing a great overview of accessibility testing http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971307.aspx