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More iPlayer testing part 2
- 6 Sep 07, 03:33 PM
In parallel to opening up the iPlayer, which is the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s seven-day catch-up service, to a wider pool of users for scrutiny, the corporation has also been doing usability testing with people who have accessibility requirements.
I’ve been looking through some more of the videos of this testing. Groups represented include visually impaired people using screen readers, hearing impaired people, motor impaired individuals using alternative input devices, and people with learning difficulties.
These people were all set similar tasks to complete, such as registering, finding and then downloading programmes.
What was interesting about watching the videos was how few issues were as a result of any disability.
For example, one tester had trouble finding a specific episode of Eastenders. This was not because of problems getting around the iPlayer with his voice input device, but because he did not realise that you had to click on each episode for a fuller description of the plot.
Similarly, another tester also had trouble finding a programme shown on News 24. She thought that the arrows used to scroll through the channels were decorative rather than functional.
One other vagary of the system was revealed when a user tried to find an episode of Dr Who. When asked to narrow his search results by channel, he chose to restrict results to ´óÏó´«Ã½ 1 – because that is the channel he saw it on when it was aired. In fact, Dr Who was to be found under ´óÏó´«Ã½ 3, because that was last channel it was broadcast on.
One other thing that kind of made me laugh was that some people liked the horizontal seven-day calendar on the home page. Others would have preferred a vertical arrangement. Which goes to show that you really can’t please all of the people all of the time.
On balance, I would think that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is well pleased with the evidence provided by the usability videos. Yes, they have revealed that a few adjustments are needed yet. But within this environment, no major accessibility headaches came to light.
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