Website’s Accessibility v. Usability
I stumbled upon this article on Promotion World. It’s a good read about a site’s usability and accessibility.
I agree with him that the two are often thought of as one and the same. But it’s pretty clear that each one has a different function for the site. Each is important, and thus each deserves some attention.
Here’s my take on the two.
Accessibility is a site’s ability to be searched, either through referring sites, through direct search, and through search engines. There are many ways to improve this part such as participating in forums, submitting articles, go ’round the Web and leave comments, which link back to the site among others. Of course, there is a science to it, called SEO.
Usability, on the other hand, has something to do with your site’s ability to engage your users, thus making them stay longer or keep them coming back. This is where your creativity comes in. What features of the site will engage your users and keep them interested? The most useful is to make it more interactive and useful.
Still on the usability part, navigation is another important thing. You make your users stay by making it easier for him to have access to the more interesting pages of your site. So you put search boxes, you interlink, and put related pages everywhere.
It’s plain to see that one cannot be without the other. Once you have worked on your accessibility aspect, it’s now time to work on the usability part.
Tricky, yes, but very important.
Do you have any more ideas to add to this?
April 15th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
[...] do not know on which page your user lands on your website, and so you have to make sure that every page is accessible and that it contains the relevant [...]