Web²Access

Results for Facebook

Description

People use Facebook to find and keep up to date with friends. The site is content-driven; users publish their own photos, comments, videos, etc and other users read them. Popular with students as it can be used to arrange events and has a built-in invitation and RSVP system. Members can form groups around interests, clubs and societies. Accessibility information can be found at AFB's blog and the CAPTCHA is offered as an audio sign in. Facebook Accessibility pages are also very helpful. m.facebook.com is an accessible option, although it is designed for the mobile phone.

Accessibility Testing Results

It is relatively easy to sign up for an account, with the sign-up form being well designed. However, within the site, the pages contain a lot of content, which results in very long pages which may be difficult and/or confusing to navigate, especially when using keyboard only access and a screen reader. Because the majority of the content is user-generated the upload of videos and pictures should have provided users with the chance to add alt tags or be alerted to the need for a short description.

#	Test	Score	Summary
1	Login, Signup and Other Forms Accessible		Well labelled forms and easy registration with email sent to activate account. No CAPTCHA used in sign-up process.
2	Image ALT Attributes		Alt tags missing from advertising images which meant a long file name was read out by NVDA. Images uploaded to the site had the same problem but you can add a comment to describe the image.
3	Link Target Definitions		Duplicate 'share' links. Some links have text such as 'about an hour ago'. The content provides some clues to the these links but not if they are read in a separate list.
4	Frame Titles and Layout		Limited use of iframes. No impact on access.
5	Removal of Stylesheet		The content is accessible and it is possible to navigate the site without style sheets. However, there are a lot of links at the top of the page which makes it very difficult to reach the page content.
6	Audio/Video Features		The text summary can be added as the title of the video. It is possible to also add the transcript as a 'comment' associated with the video, although there is no feature to identify that this comment is a transcript.
7	Video/animations - audio descriptions		The text summary can be added as the title of the video. It is possible to also add the audio description as a 'comment' associated with the video, although there is no feature to identify that this comment is an audio description.
8	Appropriate use of Tables		No tables were found on this site.
9	Tab Orderings Correct and Logical		Generally good tab order but lacking 'skip' navigation links. Also, sponsored content on right hand side appears before main content in centre.
10	Page Functionality with Keyboard		Embedded videos cannot be played directly. There is a link to YouTube, which allows video to be played but results in navigation away from Facebook site. (Mouse users can view the embedded content.)
11	Accessibility of Text Editors		There are no rich text editors and no spell checking unless extra toolbars are used or text is copy and pasted into the Facebook spelling app.
12	Appropriate Feedback with Forms		Error messages were shown when using the sign-up form if mistakes were made. There was no time restriction.
13	Contrast and Colour Check		Site use a white background, with text presented in a clear font, using a suitable selection of contrasting colours.
14	Page Integrity when Zooming		Site scales well when zoom level adjusted.
15	Text size, style, blinking elements and Readability		Font size 10pt used for majority of content. Sans-serif font used throughout. No blinking or flashing content.

Disability-Tailored Results

The following table shows how well the product performs for people with disabilities, as listed in the Disabilities section.

Percentages do not indicate how much of a site is accessible. They indicate the average figure of test results relevant to each disability. Select a disability to see which tests are relevant to it.

Activities you can do with Facebook

• Image Sharing
• Group Discussion
• Appointment Creation and Sharing
• Journal Entries
• Comments and Sharing Views
• Video Sharing
• Finding News
• Real-Time Communication
• Finding People
• Asynchronous communication (e.g.email)