Deceptive Patterns and FAST

Deceptive Patterns and FAST Framework for Accessible Specfication of Technologies @toddlibby KCDC 2024

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Todd Libby Senior Accessibility Engineer W3C Invited Expert Accessibility Advocate Portland, Maine 🦞 Phoenix, Arizona 🌵 Fmr. Exec. Head Chef @toddlibby KCDC 2024

What is FAST?

The Framework for Accessible Specfication of Technologies (FAST) advises creators of technical specifications how to ensure their technology meets the needs of people with disabilities.

Goals of FAST

Numerous guidelines exist for creating and supporting content that is accessible to people with disabilities, on and off the Web. When these guidelines are supported in the entire web ecosystem, content creators can author accessible content, and expect the accessibility features to be made available by user agents, including assistive technologies when needed. Authoring tools support creation of accessible content, and accessibility features survive transmission to different systems or conversion of content to different formats.

Nearly all of these accessibility features depend on support in some form from the technology in which content is encoded, transmitted, and sometimes transformed. But there is not yet a set of well-documented guidance for such technologies. Instead, requirements are inferred from authoring and user agent guidelines. This makes it complicated for technology creators to ensure they have met the full set of needs. Review from accessibility specialists is limited by bandwidth and expertise, so does not fully address that problem. As a result, varying technologies provide various levels of support with varying levels of compatibility with other technologies. These issues at the core layers of Web technology impact the progress that can be made from support of higher-level guidelines.

Framework for Accessible Specification of Technologies aims to fill this gap. It is intended to be a single, well-considered set of guidelines addressing specifically the features technologies need to provide to support accessible. These guidelines relate to the requirements of other guidelines but should not be confused with them. The goal of FAST is to provide a single source of guidelines for Web technology accessibility. They relate to other guidelines and documentation to provide additional information and rationale for the requirement, but are intended to be a self-sufficient set of guidelines that technology creators can follow.

User & Functional Needs

User need: A high-level accessibility characteristic of content and/or a user interface that is necessary for users to complete an objective.

Functional need: A statement that describes a specific gap in one’s ability, or a specific mismatch between ability and the designed environment or context.

Along with POUR (Perceivable, Operable, Understandabale, Robust) we have added Personalization and Deceptive Patterns with over 1,500 intersections of user and functional needs.

3 Stages of FAST

FAST Approach Three stages • Inventory functional and user needs; • Identify ways to meet needs; • Develop technology guidelines to meet those needs as best as we can.

“Dark” Patterns

Harry Brignull Cognitive Scientist, designer, UX consultant • 2010 coined “dark patterns” • Gained traction in legal circles • Still used widely today

No to “Dark” Patterns

Connotation and Inclusion

A 1945 voting ballot from Nazi Germany featuring a deceptive pattern to get voters to vote, yes. Also to find out who voted no as well.

Black/Dark - Evil, disgrace, vile, immoral • Slave/Master • White Hat/Black Hat • Blacklist/Whitelist • Grandfathered

White/Light - Purity, good, innocence, cleanliness • Primary/Secondary • Ethical/Non-Ethical Hacker • Deny/Allow-list • Exempt

A conversation about naming that Harry Brignull and I had.

Deceptive Patterns or Anti-patterns

“A deceptive pattern is a deliberate anti-pattern designed to confuse or deceive a user. There is a difference between poor design and unintentional blockers for users.” Functional Needs Subgroup

“A deceptive pattern is where there is a deliberate attempt to aim or force a user down a particular path or to trap attention in a way that redirects or focuses on a goal, that the user either doesn’t want or need or maybe harmful to them.” Functional Needs Subgroup

Deceptive Pattern: Deliberate. With intent Anti-pattern: No intent but harmful/bad UX

Solving User Needs

Makes Web pages more accessible and usable, less harmful to people with disabilities and neurodivergent users, and creates friendlier and safer user experiences for everyone.

Barriers & Categories

Deceptive Patterns Categories of barriers • Wording • Consistency (Affordances) • Adjustability / Flow blockers • (Time) Pressure • Invasive

Deceptive Patterns Examples of patterns/anti-patterns • Trick questions; • Infinite scroll; • Copy and paste is disabled; • Timers; • Asking the user to enable features (microphone, camera, etc.).

Unsubscribe Shaming Anti-Pattern

Unsubscribe Shaming Anti-Pattern

⚠ Content Warning 🚨

CAPTCHA Anti-Pattern

Confusing Navigation Anti-Pattern

Unsubscribe Shaming Anti-Pattern

Subscription Deception (Roach Motel) Deceptive Pattern

Obscuring Deceptive Pattern

Pay to Play Deceptive Pattern

Stalling Deceptive Pattern

Stalling Deceptive Pattern

Stalling Deceptive Pattern

Free Bait Deceptive Pattern

A deceptive pattern used by Donald Trump to raise money for his 2020 campaign.

Netflix Price Comparison Deceptive Pattern

Netflix Price Comparison Deceptive Pattern with the extra option shown

User Experience Deceptive Pattern, no way to delete account in Netflix

Comparison Prevention T-Mobile

Comparison Prevention T-Mobile screen comparison

Comparison Prevention hiding lowest tier

Roach Motel

Any current gap in the WCAG guidelines we want to address through FAST and Deceptive Patterns.

The most important part about bringing Deceptive Patterns to WAI / WCAG 3 is to reduce harm to those who are affected.

People can use without physical harm or risk (to themselves or others within a physical environment).

Ways to Meet User Needs

How to meet user needs: • Author design & technical implementation • User agent accessibility support of standard & author-implemented features • Assistive technology support (including accessibility API mediation)

User needs need to be analyzed for how they can be met.

But…

What about large companies like Meta, Twitter, Google, etc.? How will you get them to change?

Ethical Web Principles

• W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles • The web should be a platform that helps people and provides a positive social benefit • Ethical Principles for Web Machine Learning • This document discusses ethical issues associates with using Machine Learning and outlines considerations for web technologies that enable related use cases

Links to resources

Twitter: @toddlibby LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddlibby

@TODDLIBBY • KCDC 2024 Feedback QR Code

Questions?

Thank you!