[Sigia-l] Accessibility guidelines in Great Britain

[Listera]

From:
>http://digital-web.com/articles/designer_user_partnership

> "And finally, users need to become better acquainted with their Web
> environment. They need to learn the functions and features that are under
> their control, and use the available tools to customize their environment."

If this no-doubt-well-intentioned but ultimately simplistic approach to
"design" were true, various distros of Linux would be paragons of usability.

> "... users will not even get the chance to control their environment if we
> keep making decisions for them."

There's no such thing as designing without making decisions for the user.
It's a myth. If you are not making decisions, you are not designing.

It's also a myth that most users actually want to control their environment.
We may enjoy an open salad bar now and then but when we go to a restaurant
we don't simply order a bunch of ingredients on a plate to "control" our own
dinner. When we go out to a movie on a Saturday night, we don't ask for a
box to interactively "control" our movie. When most people want to read the
news they don't scour the web to collect raw news, they rely on their
newspaper or blog of choice to filter and format them. Most drivers don't
want to form a "partnership" with their car manufacturer and mechanic to
endlessly tinker with the hardware or software of their car, they just want
to drive it. Most people don't have their own shows on public access
television. Most people don't even know that their TV sets have extensive
audio and video controls.

Modern human life is very complex and we can't all be expected to take the
time to learn to control all sorts of "environments" that we encounter on a
daily basis. Just because the web is a digital (and therefore a malleable)
medium doesn't change this fact. We wouldn't be doing users any favors by
increasing their workload.

There should be a happy medium between the imbecilic corporate web developer
requiring everything to be IE-compliant and fixed in minutiae, and the
throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-the-user approach. Imperfect as it is, that's
usually called "design."

----
Ziya

Design is the painful art of saying no.