[CEUD-ICT] User Testing RIAs (Google reader)

[Joshue O Connor]

Hi y'all,

I gave a presentation on accessibility, WAI-ARIA and Rich Internet
Applications (RIA) at a recent Techshare 2009 pre-conference workshop.
The workshop was entitled “Web Applications Enabled with WCAG 2.0 and
WAI-ARIA" and involved a video presentation of an informal user test
(with friend and colleague Stuart Lawler) of a well known RIA (Google
Reader).

The video footage got some great feedback from people at the conference
so I published the results on our site.

In short, the video presentation aimed to examine the usability of rich
internet applications as technologies such as WAI-ARIA, and APIs like
Google's Axsjax - become an increasingly accepted feature of the
developer landscape. How will users of Assistive Technology respond to
these changes? Will they have to learn more complex ways of navigation
or different modes of interaction?

Do have a look and please comment on the site. I recommend that you
download it (though it is a whopping 100 Mbs to download, about the
third of a decent video game demo). The results were very interesting.

I look forward to your feedback.

Cheers

Josh

Ps Please note that:

1) The audio on the streamed video is for /some/ reason out of sych. The
original WMV file is fine (I have no idea why) the flv ain't working.
2) The player itself ain't great.
3) I am in breach of WCAG by autoplaying the video stream.. When I find
a better player I'll use it. The SWF file was /huge/..FLV smaller.
4) After all that - It's still worth a look...


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