how accessible are the australian bank websites presentation
TRANSCRIPT
How accessible are the Australian bank
websites?
Vivienne Conway & Scott Hollier
Why should the banks care?
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• Business case: money matters to banks! o Potential loss of 1 in 5 customers
• If they can’t use your website they will go to a bank whose website works for them
• Your shareholders won’t be impressed
o Reputation
• Banking in Australia is very competitive
• A bad reputation is hard to fix
• Good public relations
o Fixing your website will generate good public sentiment
o Having the website audited costs far less than taking out a 1 page advertisement in the newspaper
Why should the banks care? (cont’d)
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• Risk Management o Litigation
• You are open to prosecution under the Disabilities Discrimination Act (administered by Australian Human Rights Commission)
• If you know about the potential risk, then you are responsible to report it
o Risk of loss of business
o Risk of negative publicity
o Risk of not looking after your customers!
Why should the banks care? (cont’d)
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• Additional cost caused by customers needing to come to branch or phone centre
o It is less costly to you if your customers can conduct their business over the
Internet
Which banks did we check?
• Commonwealth Bank
• National Australia Bank
• ANZ
• Westpac
• St. George Bank
• Police & Nurses Credit Union
• Members Equity Bank
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How did we review the websites?
• Decided to use a different approach to a straight forward WCAG 2.0 checklist as we wanted to concentrate on actual barriers to users rather than WCAG 2.0 compliance
• Selected the “Accessibility Priority Tool”, developed by Roger Hudson from Web Usability o Australian
o Respected member of the accessibility community
o Concentrates on actual barriers
o Available free from: http://usability.com.au/2013/01/accessibility-priority-tool/
• Chose 3 pages from each website: o Home page, Contact Us page, and Login page
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Incidence vs Severity Score
• Incidence Score
o Rated from 0-4 where:
• 0 – There is no incidence or occurrence of a failure to make the component accessible
• 1 - The use of the page component or element causes access problems up to 25% of the time
• 2 - The use of the page component or element causes access problems between 25% and 50% of the time.
• 3 - The use of the page component or element causes access problems between 50% and 75% of the time.
• 4 means that use of the page component or element causes access problems more than 75% of the time
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Incidence vs Severity Score (cont’d) • Severity Score
o Rated from 1-5 where:
• 1 – Very minor inconvenience: not likely to prevent anyone from accessing content, but could be a minor irritant
• 2 – Minor inconvenience: not likely to prevent anyone from accessing content, but could affect the ability of some people to use a page
• 3 – Average inconvenience: could make it difficult for some people to access content and use a page
• 4 – Major inconvenience: could prevent some people from accessing or using page content
• 5 – Extreme inconvenience: will prevent access to sections of the site or the ability to perform required functions
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Roger Hudson on the Accessibility Priority Tool
• Tool is not designed to replace WCAG 2.0 compliance checks
• Augments compliance checks as it is designed to prioritize items enabling you to fix the ‘critical’ issues first
• Uses an algorithm to compute the value of ‘none’ to ‘critical’ based on the incidence, severity and importance ranking that has been entered
• The organisation ranks the importance (Column H) and this can be hidden from the assessor if desired.
• The assessor assigns the incidence rate and severity score and then the Access Barrier advice is computed by the algorithm
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Accessibility Priority Tool (cont’d)
• It is more subjective than a strict compliance tool and requires the assessor to be knowledgeable about the way people with disabilities use the Internet
• Adds additional checkpoints relating to other technologies such as Flash and third-party gateways
• Also adds checkpoints on device usability – screen reader, smart phone, tablet and the website’s scaling ability
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Drum roll…. The results are…
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0
2
4
6
8
10
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Commonwealth NAB ANZ WESTPAC ST. GEORGE POLICE &NURSES
ME BANK
High, Very High and Critical Issues
Critical
Very High
High
Total: High to Critical
Interpretation
• First, the lower the score, the better.
• Remember, zero incidences means no problem in that category whereas 4 means the use of the element/page component caused access problems more than 75% of the time
• A score of 1 in severity means it was a very minor inconvenience whereas 5 means an extreme inconvenience preventing access to the site or ability to perform required functions
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Rankings using this tool:
• Best
o NAB
o ANZ
o Commonwealth
o ME Bank
o Westpac
o St. George
o Police & Nurses
• Worst
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Comparison between this tool and user analysis by Scott Hollier
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Accessibility Priority Tool Scott Hollier’s User Analysis Best NAB NAB ANZ ANZ Commonwealth St. George ME Bank ME Bank Westpac Westpac St. George Commonwealth Police & Nurses Police & Nurses Worst
Scott’s analysis • Scott looked at each website and made notes about:
o The bad
o The good
o The ugly – including problems on the same individual pages as those on which the tool was used
• Scott then asked provided a score out of 10 for each website: o Commonwealth 4
o NAB 8
o ANZ 7
o Westpac 4
o St. George 6
o Police & Nurses 2 `
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Comparisons
• There was no collusion between Vivienne and Scott when performing their analyses
• The APT results were tabulated by collecting all rankings of high, very high and critical for each website and amalgamating them.
• Scores of medium to none were discarded - we were looking for significant barriers to access
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Let’s look at that graph again…
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0
2
4
6
8
10
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14
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Commonwealth NAB ANZ WESTPAC ST. GEORGE POLICE & NURSES ME BANK
High, Very High and Critical Issues
Critical
Very High
High
Total: High to Critical
Why was NAB so much better?
• Scott’s comments:
o Overall surprisingly accessible
o Clean layout
o Good contrast
o Easy to navigate
o Limited number of links
o Hard to find any problems – really very easy to use
o Only problem on the log-in page involved the fact that it was hard to find the login part of the page
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APT’s assessment for NAB
• Barriers located
o Removing CSS images removed some of the slide show and also the social media icons, however they were still provided with alternative text
o There were a few colour contrast issues – the form field borders were difficult to see
o Some form labels missing from the currency converter
o Had good applications for iPhone© and iPad© and the mobile version was easy to see and use
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What did Police & Nurses do poorly?
• Scott’s comments:
o Browser had problems with the site – kept slowing down and crashing
o Site was cluttered
o Small fonts
o Alternative text issues
o Labelling issues
o Colour contrast issues
o Hard to find anything
o Site wasn’t professional in appearance
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APT’s assessment for P&N • Alternative text issues – mislabelled buttons, objects with
no alternative, alt text not providing equivalent information • Colour contrast issues • Broken skip link • No heading structure at all on one page • Use of fixed sizing – use of text size>largest causes
content in news to be cut off and zoom causes images to become out of focus
• Mislabelled or unlabelled links • Lack of keyboard accessibility • Flash use on top menu structure rendered it unusable via
keyboard • Could not use screen reader for log-in page
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Other notable issues for other banks
• Smartphone and Tablet access o Most websites did a reasonable job of this, however the Commonwealth’s
didn’t re-size as nicely or present a mobile version which resulted in very small font size
• Login Function o One of the biggest problems is making the log-in feature keyboard and
screen reader accessible.
• Problems found ranged from a full keyboard which didn’t work at all (P&N), to a keypad which read for a screen reader but, because numbers were out of sequence, the whole Access Code could not be entered as you were re-directed to the top after each entry (ME Bank).
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Other notable issues for other banks
• Other problems: o Westpac – virtually impossible to use password entry system due
to on-screen numbers and letters as the only option. Onerous and lengthy process with a screen magnifier
• Screen cluttering o Putting too much information in one place in an attempt to provide access to
everything from the home page
o Results in a cluttered screen and difficulty in searches?
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Other issues (cont’d) • Interactive features
o Calculators for repayments, exchange rates etc. These were not well implemented for keyboard or screen reader users
• Colour contrast o Most bank websites had at least some colour contrast issues
• And the usual… Alternative text o This really shouldn’t still be a problem for developers – provide the
equivalent information as a sighted user would receive. If the image is there for formatting or decorative purposes, make sure it can be ignored by screen readers.
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What have we discovered
• While banks have made an effort to make sure their websites can be used on mobile devices, they haven’t done much thinking about how people with disabilities use websites
• There is a long way to go to have Corporate Australia understand the issues and the need for designing for inclusiveness – ‘design for all’
• Developers need to be informing their clients about the legal and ethical issues regarding website accessibility
• We need media coverage and education for both developers and website owners
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And so…
• Spread the word, provide sound advice, be active, be NOISY!
• In doing so you will be helping people both with and without disabilities have a more positive experience on the Web
• Remember that from Scott & I, advice is free – don’t be afraid to ask.
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For more information, contact us… Vivienne Conway
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 0415 383 673
• Twitter: @webkey_it
Scott Hollier
• E-mail: [email protected]
• Phone: (08) 9311 8230
• Twitter: @mediaaccessaus
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