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Obstacle course

Try for yourself what it is like to use a website when you cannot see well, your hand shakes, reading is hard or you only have a keyboard. Then you repair the website and try again.

Obstacle course

Obstacle course

A website with obstacles

You get a made-up website of a GP practice. On it, you do three short tasks, such as making an appointment. You do this with an obstacle: your vision is blurred, your hand shakes, or you only have a keyboard. Then you repair the errors in the website and try again.

Try it yourself

Choose your own obstacles and tasks, at your own pace. It takes about a quarter of an hour.

With your team

A workshop for a team meeting: five obstacles in a set order, with questions to discuss together. About three quarters of an hour.

  1. Choose an obstacle. There are eight, from blurred vision to a screen reader.
  2. Do a task on the website with errors. A stopwatch measures how long it takes.
  3. Repair the errors on the workbench and do the task again. The scoreboard shows the difference.

A simulation is an approximation. For a few minutes, you experience something that is everyday life for others. Afterwards you do not know what it is like to live with it, but you do know where a website makes things harder than they need to be.

Three obstacles move: the shaky hand, difficulty reading and distractions. Nothing flashes. With Escape or the Turn everything off button, you turn all obstacles off straight away.

How it works

  1. Choose Start the course. You get a made-up website of a GP practice, with errors in it.
  2. Turn on one or more obstacles, such as Blurred vision or Keyboard only. They only work in the made-up website.
  3. Choose a task: find the opening hours, make an appointment or ask for a callback. A stopwatch measures how long it takes, and how many clicks and tabs it costs.
  4. Repair the errors on the workbench and do the task again, with the same obstacles. The scoreboard shows the difference.
  5. In the outcome you see what you experienced and what you repaired. Print the checklist to go through your own website with your team.

Eight obstacles

  • Blurred vision. The website becomes blurry, in three strengths.
  • Tunnel vision. You only see a circle around your mouse, or around the place where you are with the keyboard.
  • Colour blind. The colours change as they do with three types of colour blindness.
  • Shaky hand. A drawn pointer shakes, and your click lands where that pointer is.
  • Keyboard only. The mouse does not work in the website.
  • Screen reader. The screen goes black. You read what a screen reader would read out, from the real code of the website. You do not hear anything: it is shown as text.
  • Difficulty reading. Letters in longer words slowly swap places.
  • Distractions. A moving news bar, and a window you have to close first.

Each obstacle says who experiences this in real life.

Nine errors to repair

The made-up website has errors that you find on many real websites. Each error comes with its success criterion from WCAG 2.2, the international standard for accessible websites:

  • light grey text (1.4.3) and images without text (1.1.1);
  • links called ‘Click here’ (2.4.4);
  • a list box you cannot get out of with the keyboard (2.1.2 and 4.1.2), and a focus you cannot see (2.4.7);
  • tiny buttons (2.5.8);
  • fields without a label (3.3.2 and 1.3.1), an error you can only tell by the colour red (1.4.1 and 3.3.1), and a form with a time limit (2.2.1).

Read more about the requirements in Perceivable: nobody misses information and Operable: everything works, even without a mouse.

With your team

Choose Start the workshop for a team meeting. You go through five obstacles in a set order: blurred vision, keyboard only, shaky hand, screen reader and difficulty reading. In each round, one person does the task and the others watch. Then you talk about it, using the questions provided, and repair the errors that go with it. Allow about three quarters of an hour. Put the screen on a big display.

At the end, you print the checklist, with space for your agreements: what will we tackle, who will do it, and when.

Good to know

  • You can always stop everything. Press Escape or Turn everything off, and all obstacles are off.
  • Nothing flashes. The shaky hand, the letters and the news bar move. If you have ‘reduce motion’ turned on on your device, they stay still.
  • In the version with errors, the callback form deletes everything after 60 seconds. That is one of the errors. You turn off the time limit on the workbench. The Obstacle course’s own stopwatch only measures, and you can turn it off under Settings.
  • Can you not get out of the list of days with Tab? That is also an error in the website. Press Escape, and the Obstacle course will move you on.
  • You cannot properly try Keyboard only and Screen reader on a phone or tablet without a keyboard. The other obstacles do work there.
  • We make the light grey text in the made-up website with a filter, not with real grey colours. The other errors really are in the code: a screen reader or a testing tool finds them too.
  • Then test your own website, with the Keyboard test and Colour-blind view (colours and contrast).

Your data

The Obstacle course works entirely in your browser. Nothing is sent and nothing is stored. The form in the made-up website does not send anything either. Make up a name and a phone number there. If you close or refresh the page, your attempts and your scoreboard are gone. If you want to keep them, print the outcome.

Sources

About the obstacles and the requirements. The figures on colour blindness and low literacy are the same as in Colour-blind view and the knowledge base (read in September 2026).

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Build something together?

Send us a message if you have an idea, are missing something or would like to try a tool with your team. Tell us in a few sentences what it is about. We read everything, and it commits you to nothing.

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