Personalized web pages

Hi,
This morning I was meeting with technology people at a bank about some
technology access issues.  One topic which came up was about the
trend towards personalized web pages for customers like at MyYahoo, etc.
One of the questions was how to make it easy to use by blind people.
I basically said that there are different views of the issues. Some
blind people want to use the same web pages as sighted people even if they
are harder to use.  Other blind people prefer that web pages
be easy to use.  (As one blind user quipped "I'm willing to show the
world one day a month that I can use the same web pages as sighted
if I can have the rest of the month to take the easy route".  )

Now, if a bank can generate the personalized web pages in different
languages to make it more convenient for the customer, why shouldn't the bank
also generate the personalized web pages to be as easy to use as possible
by blind users?  If the personalized web pages for blind users are designed
to be as easy to use by as wide a range of blind customers as possible,
that would mean that blind users with less cognitive skill or access
technology acumen would also have their needs addressed.  From a business
perspective, doesn't it make sense to include as many customer needs as
possible in the design?  As one bank person asked, how many customers
would reject a service because it is too simple to use?

Scott

Received on Wednesday, 15 December 1999 18:01:41 UTC