Comments on Interface | matters: Quick Tip: Start Thinking About Accessibility

LOL. Keil, I'd like to think Chris and I are clos...

2007-10-26T07:28:00.000-04:00

LOL. Keil, I'd like to think Chris and I are close enough that we can tease each other once in a while.

And I'm not saying designing for accessibility automatically means second-rate. I'm just saying that the intersection of accessibility and platform limitations is often used as the justification for second rate designs.

Maybe that tendency leaves a sour taste in my mouth about accessibility in general.

Come on Nathan, second-rate designs? I'm not disag...

2007-10-22T18:03:00.000-04:00

Come on Nathan, second-rate designs? I'm not disagreeing with your assessment of the accessibility options available to us in the Notes Client (you're at an entirely differnt level from me in your thinking there), but keeping accessiblity in mind as you develop doesn't make things second-rate. To make an app more color blind friendly is often a matter of simple choices while you're builing your app. While making a Notes app accessible for the legally blind may be somewhat more difficult in the Notes Client, why not keep the simple tips (like Chris's) in mind while we build our apps?
And picking on Chris' examples? I've seen some of your quick sample work. But I guess your blog isn't called Interface Matters ;).

This is a good example of where the platform reall...

2007-10-22T08:04:00.000-04:00

This is a good example of where the platform really fails us, y'know.

For one thing, the model for alt-text for images in Notes is basically missing. There's a few fake pieces, like the ability to get hover text in this situation for the RESOURCE NAME for the images -- but that's a sad hack at this point.

Second, accessibility conditions should be a defined mode of operation IMO. Whether I'm coming in through a rich client or a browser, special accessibility considerations should be as programatically defined as the user's default language or timezone. And that should allow me to use tools like hide-whens or to programatically reveal text-versions of columns. Or even better, to allow the user to say "I have trouble with icons in views/actions -- always show me the alt-text instead."

You can do this with browsers fairly easily today. It's a weakness of IBM's rich platform that they need to address, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not going to build second-rate designs (and c'mon, both your example views look torturous!) unless a customer has specific demands for it.

IBM falls into this trap with their own designs all the time. How many obvious interface tunes did we miss out on in the 8 development cycle because they had "accessibility issues" with something like moving a menu item to the context menu?

So you're inside the walls now, Chris. Go get 'em to do this stuff right! :-D

I actually have been thinking about this, but by a...

2007-10-22T03:27:00.000-04:00

I actually have been thinking about this, but by accident, rather than design. I used small icons, looking like Norwegian traffic signs to signal the status of a project.

A while back, an employee told me that he was very surprised that I had been so forward thinking that I prevented people who are color blind, like he was, from having problems. In his previous job, he had a hard time with the red and green colors.

He was so grateful that I didn't have the heart to tell him that I had used traffic signs just because I had thought it was a clever idea...