Re: Illustrations (was Re: Meeting agenda)

Marti,

	If you take a stroll down the first and second grade hall in the school
where I work, you will see a lot of work displayed. Much of it is stories
and/or reports on stories that are illustrated by the child who wrote them.
Coloring books are among the products sold to help children develop
illustrating skills before and while learning to read. Further up in the
grades, them emphasis goes to both understanding/using illustrations as
well as creating them. This continues through high school and is touched on
in college classes. The development of illustrating skills continues in the
upper grades and college in some subject more than others. Science and math
both tend to require a good deal of illustration, as well as most of the
engineering and trades preparations. 

	During the past thirty years schools have recognized the importance of
illustations in learning, and modern textbooks make the ones we used look
sad and uninspiring (just like some of our classmates said they were!). The
schools made the changes in the effort to teach more children, and that is
the same reason we need to require illustrations on the web -- to reach
more users.

				Anne

 

At 10:48 AM 4/12/01 -0400, Marti wrote:
>Anne,
> While there certainly are poorly written websites (and everything else too)
>we all had to take English (or whatever native tongue) in school and
>therefore have some foundation in how to write. While there may be some art
>courses in "how to illustrate" it is not something we should expect any
>significant number of people to have much experience or expertise in.
> For instance, right off,  I am astounded that different illustrations might
>be used for "about this site" or "privacy policy" links - even if the
>specific content is different the purpose for the site is the same and I
>would have selected the same image on any site (if I could figure out what
>an image that meant either one was).
> A visually oriented user has the choice not to read the alt text
>information, don't you think a text oriented user should have the choice not
>read the image information? (yes I can turn off image loading but I am still
>stuck with [image] [inline] and other stuff that interrupts the flow and I
>have to get past to find the "content")
> I find myself imagining a website where words and images are used and it
>comes across  like this -
>1) The sentence: See the dog run.
>2) Coded with an inline image of a dog, of course the image needs an alt
>text so
>3) the sentence is read -  See the dog [dog] run.
>I guess we could say illustrations are decorative and don't need an alt text
>(<grin>).
>Marti
>
>
>
Anne Pemberton
apembert@erols.com

http://www.erols.com/stevepem
http://www.geocities.com/apembert45

Received on Thursday, 12 April 2001 17:08:22 UTC