Usability of WAI and WebAIM

On the WAI web page, on accessibility, as far as usability goes, most people would not typically sit here and read through all of the sections on the site. However, WAI does a great job highlighting major points, bringing out Main Headings, and briefly describing them. Each of the Links have well chosen names and the site makes it very easy to find information that a user may be in search of. A Web Developer is going to be the typical user of this site. You would rarely, if ever find, just an everyday user on this site. The reason a developer may come here is to get information on how to make his site more accessible to users, even if they are blind.

Some of the Developers may be interested in finding out if their website is accessible, by the guidelines set by the W3C. In this case, they would simply find all of the information they are looking for in the Evaluating Accessibility link. Another Task that they may be looking for is how to teach people the values of Accessibility. In this case, the Developer would click Managing Accessibility and then search for the link on the page that says “Developing Web Accessibility Training and Presentations”. This site is well Laid out and any task that a developer may have is easily found.

WebAIM is another Accessibility website. However, this Webpage is very different than the previous page. this page has a lot more links to look through and is not as well laid out. Links are harder to find on the web site making it much less usable. You have to know where you are going in order to find anything. I would much rather search through the WAI website. I tried to find anything resembling training or presentations for Accessibility. Finding information on Training and Presentation offered by the website was not a problem at all. However, if a Developer was faced with the challenge of setting up a presentation to prove to the Managers of the business that Accessibility was important, the information he needed was not in one section of the website. Various sections are possibly scattered throughout the website. I would say that the real users of this website were IT managers who were looking for a place to send Developers for training in accessibility. Most developers would not come here in search of information on Accessibility.