Category: Usability

After the flurry of comments on my last post about accessibility on the web, I wanted to add another tidbit of interesting and related news. An aspect of accessibility that is often not thought of during software and web site design is the troubles that occur for users who are colour blind. Basic usability tenets hold that encoding meaning into colour needs to be done carefully for various reasons such as colour blind users and the large variance in cultural significance for a single colour.

But I’ve always wondered what colour blind users actually experience of my designs. It is a simple thing to activate a screen reader and check to make sure that it is able to convey the meaning of the screen verbally. But how do I check to see what a colour blind person sees?

I came across this neat blog entry by a programmer about a new tool that allows you to preview software in the 3 distinct “flavours” of colour blindness. Note that I did not say you can easily do the preview – it doesn’t look easy at all and seems to be limited to a specific means of building software. However I think tools such as this are a great idea and if we could make this kind of analysis easier and more commonplace I’d be a much happier guy.

News has surfaced that a blind man has sued Target over its website’s inability to be used properly by blind computer users.  The link I’ve included is, frankly, embarrassing because I think of that online community at arstechnica as intelligent and typically non-reactive.  However if you follow the article’s discussion link you’ll see some really, really stupid responses.

This particular issue strikes a chord with me because in a past life I wrote a research paper on the experience blind users have on the Internet.  I interviewed a blind man and talked to him about his experiences with the Internet and the pages he uses daily.  The sad part is that he pointed out this exact problem to me though it was with the Vancouver Sun’s website at the time.  That was over 5 years ago now I believe.  Isn’t progress grand?

I am doubly perplexed by people’s comments that coding web pages for blind people is difficult.  Continue reading Blind Man Sues Over Website Design

Marty sent me a link to this baby name page that allows you to see the popularity of names in the US since the 1880s. While the content is interesting enough, I am totally impressed with the interface.

There are some clunky parts (like how do you know if your cursor is currently in the name typing space or not?) but otherwise this is a very good way to visualize this data. It incorporates a quasi-zooming interface that updates as you type. You can use the mouse to find further data on specific parts of the graph. Sadly they resort to the age-old blue=boy girl=pink colour scheme, but that’s forgivable considering the audience.

Overall I’d say this is a great use of technology! Hats off to the designer and coder.

You’ll note that the name ‘Kirk’ has fallen out of favour … I mean why even bother trying to get your kid to live up to that high of a standard? It’s just setting the kid up for a lifetime of disappointment .. unless it’s a girl… nobody’s named their girl ‘Kirk’ yet. Do we dare?