So I got home and immediately downloaded the free DSi Web browser (by Opera Software) and a short time later I was on my PC, filling out the DSi product survey on Club.Nintendo.com when I thought, “Hey! Why don’t they have the surveys ON the DSi?” Inspiration came flying in for round two a couple seconds later.

I popped onto SurveyGizmo.com and started creating a basic survey that uses a bunch of our great features – Show/Hide Triggers, Simple and Advanced Page Jumping, Star Ranking tables, Save & Continue links – even Image Select questions and Piping!

Check out this sample survey: http://surveygizmo.dsi.sgizmo.com

Well holy cow! Not only do our surveys look great on the Nintendo DSi, but everything we give you works on this tiny browser! Just as awesome – I tested the same survey in the Wii Web Browser (also by Opera) and was just as pleased. Props to the Guys and Gals at Nintendo, and those great developers over at Opera Software. You all did an incredible job! SurveyGizmo users, if you’ve ever wanted to survey someone about video games in their own environment, you’ve got a great new platform for reaching your audience. Have fun!

EASI’s request was last minute, because their scheduled speaker on this topic unfortunately fell ill. Norm Coombs of EASI googled “Accessible Surveys” and we came up. He gave us a call and we were more than happy to fill in since accessible surveys and accessible forms is something we are really passionate about.

By the way, if you haven’t had a chance to read OSU’s – Web Accessibility Center’s review of accessibility in surveys tools, please do. It’s a great detailed review of online survey tools, including SurveyGizmo. We took this survey review to heart and the next release of SurveyGizmo will implement most of the suggestions they made to even further improve accessibility in our surveys.

PS – If you aren’t familiar with the term “accessibility” as it relates to surveys, forms or other online content, that’s OK. Web Accessibility describes the degree to which the online content, website or service is able to provide the functionality to persons with disabilities in general. This might refer to someone who is blind, has reduced mobility and can’t use a mouse, etc. In an effort to make our surveys more accessible, SurveyGizmo employs methods that allow screen readers to interact with the surveys. We make the surveys keyboard navigable so someone unable to use a mouse can still interact. There is more to it than that, but you get the idea.

The administrator interfaces in SurveyGizmo are a model of usability. Interfaces are clean, navigation elements are easy to find, and “flow” through the creation process seemed to us more intuitive than any of the other survey tools.

The final grade on SurveyGizmo was B+, so we still have room for improvement, but we were the highest rated of those evaluated.

The blog post was on Idealware who, in their own words, provide “candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits.”

Here is a link to the blog post: http://www.idealware.org/blog/2008/01/ask-idealware-what-online-surveying.html

In the blog them mention five questions you should ask yourself when you are evaluating survey software. I’d repeat them here, but I’ll suggest instead that you read the article (I don’t want to steal any thunder). The comparisons in the article are useful for both not-for-profit and profit oriented organizations.

After working with dozens of non-profits I would mention one other big point to consider: you should pick an accessible survey tool. In fact, if you are grant funded you may need to pick online tools that meet certain accessibility criteria. Which is something our software does well and we are dedicated to.

I encourage everyone considering a new survey tool to read this quick review.

PS: Thanks, Laura at Ideaware for listing us in your guide!

Not being a Blackberry person myself, I didn’t even know this was possible. We have known for months that a growing number of people are using mobile devices (like Treos) to take surveys. But until now, we didn’t even know the Blackberry had a web browser (blush).

We will post more information about how well the surveys work (and look) on the Blackberry as soon as we test them ourselves.

If you have one, try one of your surveys and see how well they work! Post a comment about your experience and any tips we can use to make sure surveys work well on this platform.

As always, we look forward to your feedback!

Update: 9/17/2007

Just a quick update. Having struggled with the cellular carriers to get my number ported I was forced to get a whole new phone (long story). The good news is that I am now a proud owner of a Blackberry 8830! I can confirm that, yes, our surveys work and look darn good on an Blackberry device. I suspect this is largely due to all the accessibility work we have done.

Previously, certain sections of the SurveyGizmo application would “garble” non-English characters — making your surveys unattractive and unreadable. Thanks to a lot of help from our customers in the Netherlands, we were finally able to solve this problem.

Also, we are looking for volunteers to help us translate SurveyGizmo into other languages. If this sounds like a project that interests you, please let us know. We are giving away free lifetime Professional accounts to individuals who help us translate our tool into a new language.

Best of luck on all your survey projects!

-The SurveyGizmo Team

Special Note: If you currently have a survey in SurveyGizmo that uses these characters, please check your survey over carefully. Our switch to become an international survey tool required us to switch to UTF-8 (a character code standard) from ISO-8859. Because of this you should confirm that your survey looks good now in UTF8 (only if you have surveys published in languages other than English). If you see any problems, just update the question that looks garbled once last time – and you will be good to go.

We have seen a lot of interest recently in SurveyGizmo’s accessibility features and how our surveys meet current accessibility and usability standards, such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act or the British version the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act). We are happy to report we meet Section 508 (and likely the DDA as well). Customers reviewing survey tools tell us SurveyGizmo is the most accessible survey tool on the market.

An accessibility study group at UC Berkley did an accessibility comparison of online survey tools this spring and found that SurveyGimzo came out on top. Around the same time, the Usability Professionals’ Association ran a recent article comparing SurveyGizmo and another survey tool vendor.

“Because we found an accessible tool, we stopped our search and deployed a survey with SurveyGizmo. Survey creation and activation was simple, and the results were easy to gather. But most importantly for us, our users with disabilities reported no difficulties in accessing, completing, and submitting the survey.”

Seeking an Accessible and Usable Survey Tool
By Karen Mardahl and Lisa Pappas

Why should you care if your surveys are accessible?

First, being accessible means meeting a variety of requirements in the HTML that make your survey easier to use by people who may be attempting to access them under non-traditional circumstances. For instance:

• A blind user reading and navigating with a screen reader
• A user with a broken hand trying to navigate solely with the keyboard
• Anyone with reduced motor controls who has trouble clicking precisely
• Anyone with vision issues who desires larger type or higher contrast colors (think aging baby-boomers)

Offering better accessibility in your surveys means a larger and more satisfied audience. Many of our competitors’ surveys rely solely on JavaScript and mouse interactions, making it impossible to navigate a survey and answers questions using only a keyboard.

I’ve pushed for accessible, Web Standards based design for years and have thrown my hat in the ring to promote it in the past. When I designed our web survey templates over a year ago, accessibility issues were top of mind, and we are currently working on some enhancements to improve things still further.

We will also feature an in-depth article on Building Accessible Surveys in the near future. In the meantime, let us know if we can answer any of your questions on accessible survey design.

SurveyGizmo VPAT

You can download our our VPAT here.