The Importance of User Testing with People with Disabilities

Join Natalie Garza and accessibility expert Natalie MacLees in the 19th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. In this episode, they discuss the vital practice of user testing, especially with people with disabilities. From defining user testing to its execution and why it’s indispensable, learn how involving disabled users can uncover specific issues that would otherwise be missed. They also explore how to find and recruit disabled testers, the help available from specialized organizations, and the benefits of conducting tests remotely.

Natalie Garza: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. This is episode 19. I am Natalie Garza, one of the co-hosts, and with me today is.

Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees, accessibility expert.

Natalie Garza: And in today’s episode, she’s going to teach us all about user testing, specifically with people with disabilities. So, to get started, what is user testing in general?

Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so when you’re building a product or a website, you can do testing with real users, and that can look like a few different things that we’ll talk about today. But basically, you sit down real users in front of your product.

And have them try it out. And it is one of the most maddening and frustrating things you will ever do because no matter how carefully you have designed something and you think it’s so beautiful, users will not be able to figure out how to do anything and it will drive you up the wall.

But basically, you sit them down and give them a task and say, you know, “Hey, find information about elephants on this website,” or “put a product in a cart and check out.” You give them a task like that to complete, and then you kind of observe as they go through that task. You see where they run into problems, where they run into issues, and where they get confused, and you keep track of how long it takes ’em to complete the task.

Natalie Garza: Yeah. As frustrating as it can be, it’s probably one of the most valuable things you can do.

Natalie MacLees: Absolutely, you can learn so, so much about your product and you could, you could spend hours looking at a screen of your app, for example, and in two or three user tests get way more information on what should be changed and how it should look, by watching some real users attempt to use it.

Natalie Garza: Yeah, it’s a real eye-opener, ’cause you realize not everyone treats technology the same as you.

Natalie MacLees: And not everybody is super tech savvy, you will have situations where you have a giant flashing red button in the middle of the screen that says, “click here,” and users will go,” I don’t, I don’t see where to click. I don’t.”

And it’s really hard to not just do it for them.

Natalie Garza: Yeah, you, you can’t help ’em if they’re just staring blankly. You just have to let them.

Natalie MacLees: Yeah. You can kind of step in and kind of gently nudge them if they start to get really frustrated. But yeah, you should generally try not to participate too much.

Natalie Garza: Yeah, and I would say user testing usually is targeted towards like the audience of the product that you’re working on, like if it’s a business product, you’re gonna get the business people to come test it. Or if it’s for non-tech-savvy people, you’re gonna get non-tech-savvy users.

Natalie MacLees: Yeah, exactly. So you wanna figure out who your user base is, and then that’s who you wanna recruit to come in and do the user test.

Natalie Garza: But often disabled users get overlooked, so why should...