Re: Crawling ants?

----- Original Message -----
From: "William Loughborough" <love26@gorge.net>


> At 01:00 PM 3/6/01 +0200, Lisa Seeman wrote:
> >"minimize" and not "do not use" so that you can have alert boxes or other
> >necessary distractions.
>
> Repeat after me: "user-controllable".

In the case of people who are distracted by web page components because of
AD(H)D, I don't think "user-controllable" helps here. For one thing, most
people with ADD aren't looking for accessibility aids to begin with. It's of
no help to them to turn it off if they don't know it exists. And what
exactly would they turn off? There is no "disable annoying little ants
crawling across the screen" checkbox in IE or Netscape: only "disable
JavaScript", which would throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. I
really don't see how something like this could be user-controllable in a way
that doesn't break the overall design of most sites that use this kind of
thing, and as such, responsibility rests with the designer. I think it has
to go into the guidelines.

I say it's a "do not use", and at least a P3. If it's worded specifically
enough to screen all of these scenarios, I'd go so far as to say it's a P2.

(And, of course, this was brought up in the 15 minutes I was dragged out of
the room in Boston. Doh!)

> Not to speak for Lisa but I don't think we want to say either "minimize"
or
> "do not use" but rather "provide escape route" from crawling ants, etc.
> with "exception" for life-threatening alarms?

Putting on my developer hat here, the protocols in place on the web ensure
that life-threatening alarm site designs don't get out of the brainstorming
stage. And if somehow they did, I'd hope they're more interested in making
it work than in worrying about not having an exemption for AAA compliance.
:)

-
m

Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2001 12:27:43 UTC