Guidelines for Web Usability and Accessibility on the Nintendo Wii

The aim of the present study is to propose a set of guidelines for designing Internet web sites usable and accessible with the Nintendo Wii console. After an accurate analysis of usability issues and of the typical Wii Internet users, twelve usability guidelines will be proposed. The named guidelines are focused on the visibility, understandability, clickability and compatibility issues. We have then restructured a sam- ple web site according to the guidelines. To prove their effectiveness, we performed the usability tests on a sample of fourty individuals, selected among the various categories of the potential users of the Nintendo Wii console, after having visited the restructured and the original web sites. The analysis of the resulting information confirmed that the restructured web site is more usable than the original and the improvement is more pronounced for weak categories (elderly and individuals with no expe- rience with web browsing). Furthermore the adoption of the guidelines reduces the difficulties experienced by users with different expertise, vis- iting a web site with the Wii console.