mindful user experience

Slideshows, sliders, and carousels are bad anyway, if you must use them make them accessible

Bruce Klopsteins -

You should not be using slideshows, sliders, or carousels anyway as they are poor return on investment (ROI) but if you do make sure they are accessible.

@Russ Weakley has some awesome links of web development issues

Through his list I heard about Gian Wild’s recent tips through Russ Weakley’s excellent links for light reading. He finds lots of good articles every week on contemporary web development issues. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Gian Wild has some good advice on how to make your slider accessible

Gian and her company AccessibilityOz have been working on accessibility for many years.

The unbearable inaccessibility of slideshows | SitePoint | Gian Wild | Feb 2015

The key things are:

  • Accessible controls (keyboard mouse, touch, colour contrast, semantic labels)
  • Pause
  • Focus order makes sense
  • Coded standards compliant
  • Alt text representation

Have your really thought about the business case for putting a moving carousel on your site?

One of my pet peeves is slider that is set to automatically change on default. Why do business owners insist on this moving feast. If I am in a exploratory information seeking behaviour mode I may want to look at them. Otherwise they are a distraction. They almost always focus on what the business wants to market not what the customer wants to do.

A short word on information seeking behaviour

If you are wondering about the exploratory mode of information seeking behaviour this article by Information Architecture expert @Donna Spencer covers it well.

If you haven’t thought about the different ways people are seeking information through you site you should.
Four modes of seeking information and how to design for them | Boxes and Arrows | Donna Spencer | Mar 2006