Testing needed

Version 3.1 by Lizzie Bruce on 2019/04/04 18:39

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 evidence that mid-sentence links cause readability issues. But one evidence items is slightly ambiguous, another is in an unreadable format and 2 sources are behind a paywall. 

Paywall or member content

These are locked:
IEEE Xplore Digital Library – Imprudent linking weaves a tangled Web
SAGE Journals – Explicitness of local navigational links

Can anyone access them for the project?

Autism

We have anecdotal evidence suggesting mid-sentence links cause difficulty for autistic users. But do not know of usability studies or academic papers to support this specifically. 

Does anyone know of usability research around mid-sentence links and autistic users?

Numbers

Does type font sufficiently reduce any confusion people experience between 1 (one), l (lowercase letter l) and I (uppercase letter i) and 0 (zero) and O (capital letter o)? Is it enough to recommend writing sentences another way to avoid this or do we need special style rules for 0 and 1 in long form copy? Should we recommend removing these from automatically generated passwords and customer codes?

 

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.