Testing needed

Version 1.15 by Lizzie Bruce on 2019/03/17 09:56

We want to find usability evidence to answer 4 style points we did not identify sufficient usability evidence for in Beta. If no evidence exists, we'll carry out new usability studies.

If you know of any evidence for any of these please add a comment on this page, if possible link to the usability study.

Positive contractions

We know negative contractions cause issues for some users. Do positive contractions also reduce readability for people with dyslexia, low vision and learning difficulties?

Link placement in sentences

We have anecdotal evidence that mid-sentence links cause readability issues for some users. We do not know of usability studies or academic papers to support this. Does having a link mid-sentence impair readability?

Numbers

Do people confuse 1 (one), l (lowercase letter l) and I (uppercase letter i)? Do they confuse 0 (zero) and O (capital letter o)? Is it enough to recommend writing sentences another way to avoid this, or can do we need special style rules for 0 and 1?

Punctuation and screen readers

We know users can:

configure their screen reading software
adapt to idiosyncrasies of software
use software that learns user preferences
comprehend spoken text at very high speeds
slow down, pause and replay spoken text for clarity

But we would still like to know if having punctuation, for example "en dash", read out is problem, even a low level one, for any users. As we can alleviate that type of thing with sensible content readability guidelines. That is what they are for.

Can we gather a comprehensive list of how screen readers read out dashes? And find out what they do with hyphens? Can we comprehensively research screen readers with other punctuation that conveys meaning or adds nuance, like brackets?

Our approach

First we're searching through existing usability evidence available from:

Then, if applicable, we'll investigate carrying out new usability testing.