Re: principles

At 12:46 PM 2000-08-17 -0700, Kynn Bartlett wrote:
>At 06:51 AM 8/17/2000 , William Loughborough wrote:
>>WL: We seem to assume that "cognitive barriers" is a way of saying that
>>their possessor *can't* "comprehend the information"? 
>
>Cognitive barriers is a way of saying that the document contains
>artificial barriers which prevent understanding.
>
>I think.
>
>In other words, we need to make sure we're not talking about
>defects in -people- but rather defects -in the ability of the
>document to present itself properly-.
>

AG::

Oh, I could be indelicate enough to say that there are things 'wrong' with
people.  But that we should accomodate for these things where it is
reasonably doable.  I claim my myopia and astigmatism are things 'wrong'
with my eyes that my eyeglasses accomodate.

At RESNA we encountered a tale that bears on this thread.  This came from
an occupational therapist who was working with a cognitively limited worker
working bagging etc. in a supermarket.  The worker had been able to
function fine on the job until they changed the time clock.  In place of
the old mechanical time clock, they had a new digital time clock where you
had to read and follow the LED menus to perform the clock-in, to-lunch,
from-lunch and clock-out transactions.  The worker couldn't read the
prompts and couldn't work the time clock successfully.  The result was they
were working hours that they were not being credited with.  The employee's
time records were all messed up and it was a problem.

Here a person who can do a job is being obstructed from being able to
function in that job by a gratuitously difficult peripheral function.  

That's the sort of thing we can hope to avoid in web content, too.

Al

Received on Thursday, 17 August 2000 22:26:03 UTC