DECO7140 | Semester 2, 2023

Assessment Task Sheet

Interface Evaluation

Due date: 25 August 2023 | 3.00pm

Weighting: 2

Learning Objectives: 1, 2, 4, 5, 9

Submission: Turnitin via a link in the course Blackboard site

Expected word count: 1200 - 1600 words

Whilst this assessment item is designated as a report, students will not need to  include report elements such as an introduction and conclusion.  This task sheet outlines what should be included in the report.

Task Description

For this assessment, students will evaluate a chosen website against the W3C (World Wide Web

Consortium) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 – Guidelines 1, 2 and 3. The objective is to assess the website's compliance with accessibility principles and provide

recommendations for improving its accessibility.

The task involves the following steps:

1. Website Selection: You are required to choose a website for evaluation. It can be any live    website of their choice, preferably one with a reasonable amount of content and functionality.

2. Accessibility Principles: You needs to select at least four accessibility principles success criteria from the W3C Accessibility Initiative Standards to evaluate the chosen website against. These principles may include, but are not limited to, perceivability, operability, understandability, and robustness.

3. Evaluation: You will conduct a thorough evaluation of the website based on the selected   accessibility principles. They should identify areas where the website falls short in meeting the principles and provide clear explanations of the issues.

4. Recommendations: For each identified accessibility issue, you should provide actionable recommendations on how the website can be modified or enhanced to comply with the chosen principles including, where relevant, suggested code.  For each recommendation you should include an explanation of how these recommendations address the identified issue.

5. Report: You will compile a comprehensive report that incorporates your evaluation findings and recommendations. The report should include a description of the selected accessibility principles, an explanation of how they apply to the website, an overview of the evaluation    results, and detailed recommendations for improving accessibility.

The assessment aims to develop your understanding of web accessibility standards and your ability to evaluate and recommend improvements for an existing website. By engaging in this task, you will gain practical experience in assessing accessibility issues and proposing solutions, promoting the importance of inclusive web design practices.

Generative AI is permitted with boundaries

Generative AI is NOT PERMITTED in this assessment.

During Contact sessions, students will use generative AI to create ‘Cheat Sheets’ for WCAG 2.1 success criteria. You will use these cheat sheets to evaluate your selected websites against the  success criteria that is the subject of the cheat sheets.

You may not use generative AI to:

.    Assist you with evaluating a website (or its HTML or CSS code)

.    Assist you with writing the report

Guide to what you will need to do

The lectures will include information that is relevant to the completion of the sections of your design report.  Further, the activities conducted in tutorials have been designed to provide you with greater understanding, particularly how to apply the information contained in lectures.

This is a suggested process for completing this assessment:

1. Website selection: Choose websites that vary in terms of complexity, type of content, and   target audience.  You could select for example: a news website, an e-commerce platform, a government website and a community group website.  You only need to evaluate one page from each website you have selected.

2. Choosing success criteria: You should choose four different success criteria that you will use for your evaluation and evaluate each website against the 4 same success criteria.

3. Assessing accessibility: Using the cheat sheets that have been prepared in Contact Sessions (they will be published on BlackBoard) you should evaluate how well each websites meets the   success criteria based on the information in the cheat sheets.  You should identify both good

practices and areas of non-compliance.

4. Making recommendations: For each issue identified, you should provide a clear and practical recommendation on how to fix it.  The recommendations should be guided by the information    included in the cheat sheet.

5. Providing sample code and ARIA information: Where applicable, you should provide sample HTML, CSS or JavaScript code that demonstrates how the website should implement your

recommendations.  This involves copying code from the website, editing or adding to that code and highlighting the edits and additions that you are recommending.

6. Reporting: You should compile your findings and recommendations into a report.  The report could include screenshots, code snippets, and references to the relevant success criteria and guidelines.

Report structure

Your report should be structured to have a section for each website.  Each section should have the following elements:

1. Website Information: The name of the website and the URL for the page that you evaluated.

2. Website overview: A brief description of the website, its purpose, target audience, and key features.

3. Evaluation: For each success criterion that you have selected:

a.   The name (including the number) of the success criteria

b.   The key purpose of the criteria using your own words (not copied from the cheat sheets provided)

c.   The approach to test the criteria (not copied from the cheat sheets provided)

d.   How the website does or does not meet the criteria – you may choose to include

screenshots with annotations to help with your explanation

e.  Your recommendations including, where relevant:

i.   Sample code copied from the website highlighting the edits and/or additions that you recommend

ii.   Description of ARIA usage to meet the criterion or enhance accessibility f.   An explanation of how your recommendations will address the issue

How to write this report

This report does not require an introduction and conclusion.

However, all other aspects of the report should be written to a professional standard using

professional language that is free from errors (grammar, spelling, and punctuation).  You should use headings and paragraphs.  Bullet points are acceptable for listing issues and recommendations but

should be accompanied by a detailed explanation.

Each evaluation (section) should be 300-400 words.