1 Accordian?

Surely it’s about accordi*o*n forms instead of accordi*a*n forms?

posted at 08:56 am on September 21, 2010 by rogier

2

““Three point five pages.” It’s my usual answer when someone asks me “how long should my web form be?””

I appreciate where you’re coming from, Luke, but you are the expert and the people asking the question obviously are not. Derision is hardly an appropriate response.

Helping them understand what is involved in designing the form might be a more optimal – and professional – response.

posted at 12:46 pm on September 21, 2010 by gef05

3 A note on ARIA

Overall I thought this was a very well written and informative article.

I wanted to bring out 1 point about ARIA. New screen readers, I’m sure, do support ARIA. But the problem with most readers is that they are crazy-expensive to not only buy, but upgrade as well.

JAWS, the most popular screen reader, costs around $900 and that’s just for the standard version.

I guess my point is that we can’t really rely on disabled people having up to date screen readers, like we do for people who can upgrade a Web browser for free. So be cautious in fully relying on cutting edge accessibility techniques.

I’m not sure where that leaves us in regards to accordion menus (I would love to test one in a screen reader), but I think it should speak to the importance of using proper markup while creating these forms.

Very good read, thanks for putting it together.

posted at 01:02 pm on September 21, 2010 by Tim Wright

4

@gef05 -it’s a joke. Sorry if you’re upset.

To your request: “Helping them understand what is involved in designing the form might be a more optimal – and professional”

That’s what the rest of this article is all about. Hope you find it useful.

posted at 01:49 pm on September 21, 2010 by lukew

5

@Tim Wright -if you get a chance to test one -let us know what you find!
thanks.

posted at 01:50 pm on September 21, 2010 by lukew

6 Conversions

Interesting article, but with a 100% pass rate I think “accordion forms aren’t likely to negatively influence conversion” is inaccurate. The right conclusion is that the test doesn’t accurately model conversion rates, so those shouldn’t be predicted here.

posted at 02:03 pm on September 21, 2010 by n8o

7 Real Data

Right now I’m looking at split testing data from a live test, pitting a long form vs a form broken into steps on a single page (almost identical to an ‘accordion’ form) The test has a sample size of several thousand users, and so far both pages are converting exactly the same.

I’m not saying that accordion forms don’t have the potential to help conversions – I just wanted to illustrate how important testing can be, and how dangerous it can be to make assumptions about user interaction.

posted at 06:30 pm on September 21, 2010 by monty

8 Accessability

A proper accordion form could be made accessible without using ARIA tags. As long as you are hiding the sections in a way that doesn’t cause the screen readers to not see the sections (position:absolute;left:-9000px; or height:0;overflow:hidden; vs display:none;) screen readers will simply see the form as one long form.

If you set it up properly it would be even better for screen readers than the long form because you are breaking the form up logically instead into clearly labeled sections/fieldsets rather than one long form. This should be done anyway but this display model forces it.

ARIA tags are fine and dandy but they are more important for non-standard interactions rather than something like forms, which screen readers typically handle very well.

posted at 06:45 pm on September 21, 2010 by mdarnell

9 Statistics

I think that 100% pass rate of only 24 users isn’t really meaningful result, but increase in speed of completion is very important if it’s impossible to shorten a form.

As I can see, accordion forms is a great idea. Thanks for the article!

posted at 06:53 pm on September 21, 2010 by scriptin