Payam+Azadi+Accessibility+Evaluation

=UMD Admissions Website Accessibility= September 18, 2011 by **Payam Azadi**

A critique of the UMD admissions website from the scope of accessibility by users with disabilities.

[|UMD Admissions Portal]

The UMD Admissions portal is the central area to which all prospective UMD students, undergraduate and graduate, must go to in order to apply to the university. One would hope that this website is easily navigable and fully accessible, because the university should facilitate applications from the sharpest minds, regardless of how sharp their eyes, coordination, or bodies in general are.

Using a conventional browser, the website is hard to read, and hard to use, reminiscent of many UMD sites, which seem to have been built years ago. The admissions site has not changed at all since I was applying in 2008. One of the first things you notice is that while there is a large banner image, and important buttons on the right panel, none of the images have alt-text. Particularly the 'Apply Online' button, which is the single most important call-to-action on the entire page, does not have any alt text.

With regards to operability, functionality is certainly not available from the keyboard. This is indicative of a very quick release clearly lacking in testing. Try pressing tab repeatedly, and instead of cycling through the many links, you move between the (nearly invisible) search box at the top right, to the "quick links" drop down, with no ability to go to any of the other links or buttons. Furthermore, navigation is a relative nightmare. Click the "Apply Online" button, or the "Apply Online" link, and you are taken to another, nearly identical page missing any 'apply online' buttons but a bold link (although in black, so you cannot really tell if it is a link) which THEN takes you to the start of the application process. Worse yet, the navigation on the left still highlights "Apply" which is the same as the previous page. None of this makes any sense. Furthermore the "Check your admission decision online" button takes you to the application page, not the status page. Moreover, the "quick links" area does not highlight the page you are actually on depending on where you go, it always selects "Quick links". In other words, the web page neither appears nor operates in a predictable way.

Finally, as to text readability, the black font/white background is typical of an accessible application, however, the fonts are very small, and the links especially on the left navigation are miniscule and seem pointless. The same links are duplicated in two, sometimes three different areas, but each place they are in small, barely contrasting font (yellow on red, white on red) in small, thin font. Also the title (heading) of the page is almost invisible, as it is above a picture with a black background, in black background, in small white font. It is lost between the UMD logo, and the image of the terp. Also, the title (tag) of the page where the actual application portal begins is "Online Application Login" which would be confusing for someone who has multiple applications open because you do not know which university's application you are on.

All in all, the admissions website has some of the right ideas, but overall fails to be accessible, not to mention usable - not just to the standard unimpaired user, but especially to users with disability, in particular those with diminished eyesight. My father could never figure out how to apply to the university even with his glasses on, and I imagine even students with the thickest lens would have trouble figuring out how to begin and check the application process given this website.