Both Website Accessibility and Usability are often misused and confused. Usability is a measure of how easy it is to use a site, while accessibility relates to whether the site can be accessed by everybody.
Website Usability:
Is a measure of how easy a system is to use and can be applied to any interaction between a user and the website. Usability is made up of several key factors:
- Ease of learning - how steep the learning curve is.
- Efficiency of use - how quickly a user can perform a task on a website, may be finding a certain piece of information, using the navigation menu and many other tasks depending on the website.
- Ease of memorisation - how simple (or difficult) it is to remember how to perform a particular task.
- Error trapping - ensuring errors are prevented by informing the user how to use the website before errors occur. When they do occur the user experience is not completely broken by providing feedback to the user why the error has accrued.
- Satisfaction - a user is able to perform a given task on a site satisfactorily.
Website Accessibility:
Allows for equal access to all users regardless of technological device and physical means. This ranges from people with mobile phones, screen readers and monitor size. Accessibility can even cover how accessible your website is for users with slow connections. A blind user will use a screen reader, whilst a businessman uses a mobile phone and granny turns her font size up, accessibility is about ensuring your site can be accessed equally in all these scenarios