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Usability Engineering & Web Accessibility

Users of a website expect to find the information they are looking for easily. The same goes for an online application; if a user is confused or unable to perform a task quickly, they will abandon the site just as quickly, impacting the online revenue for a business and/or leading to increased customer service calls. For users who have vision or mobility impairments, navigating a web site or using an application can be an even more frustrating affair if steps aren't taken to make the web an easier place to operate.  At SymSoft, we believe that these twin areas of usability and accessibility deserve more than just a passing glance; that's why we work hard to make our solutions usable, accessible, and standards-compliant. 

 

Usability Engineering

SymSoft Solutions helps clients detect usability issues with their current websites and web applications by conducting usability analysis and presenting recommendations on how to improve the user-friendliness of a website or the intuitiveness of an online application.

This usability analysis involves analyzing traffic usage patterns, interviewing users about their needs and expectations, and conducting usability tests with state-of-the-art tools to further uncover how a user truly uses a site.

The best usability engineering doesn't stop there though, and neither do we. We gather additional information from business stakeholders to determine what their objectives and branding needs are, and assess how they conform with or differ from their site users.

The resulting research from these separate efforts are then combined, analyzed, and ranked, using information architecture (IA) techniques, such as content modeling, wireframes, and card-sorting, to determine the best way to organize or present the information. This information is further refined using additional tests with users and feedback from stakeholders, interactively improving the site or application with each additional pass.

We then use the final conclusions of the usability analysis to make tweaks, adjustments, or even wholesale redesigns of websites or applications so that the new IA better aligns the organization, its site visitors, and the needs of both.

Notable Projects:

 

Web Accessibility

Along with usability, accessibility concerns itself with ensuring that the greatest numbers of potential users can, indeed, use a solution. We don't just focus on governmental requirements of accessibility compliance though; we also develop and rigorously test our solutions so that they can be supported on the greatest numbers of browsers, operating systems, and devices.

As a long-time government web application developer, SymSoft Solutions has always made accessibility a requirement of the solutions we deliver to our customers in both the public and private sectors.

For us, accessibility begins with equal access and equal opportunity for people with disabilities. We follow the guidelines from WCAG and Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and review the website against these guidelines, including proper use of tables, images and colors, and test it against assistive devices. We also analyze the web property for compliance with W3C standards, including the use of XHTML and cascading style sheets (CSS) for separation of presentation and content. Apart from the web pages, we analyze other document types on the website such as pdfs or downloads, and identify accessibility issues, if any.

And, beyond the technical accessibility issues, we also concern ourselves with optimizing our websites and applications so that they download fast and operate correctly on multiple web browsers on multiple devices, making sure that the barriers to use anything we build can be nearly eliminated.

We also spend time with our clients to understand more about accessibility, providing knowledge transfer of these principals via specifications, guidelines, and templates to maintain web accessibility.

Notable Projects:

While SymSoft Solutions has always made accessibility a requirement for the solutions we deliver, some of our projects main focus is Web Accessibility. We have helped many of our customers in achieving the accessibility compliance, and providing accessibility training for ongoing maintenance.