Re: Jakob Nielsen's PDF format report

>>seems to me that if he was writing about accesibility, he'd have 
>>had a perfect opportunity to demonstrate it.

It would not have killed the mighty NNGroup to have published the 
report in Acrobat 3 format (in keeping with his excellency's diktat 
to use outdated Acrobat versions) *and* the accessible Acrobat 5. As 
for accessibility in other forms-- it's essentially a printed report 
in drag. The obvious course of action is to sell an audiotape and/or 
a Braille version. Everybody's happy. (Impediment: The big fish in 
that small pond, RFB&D, can take months to bother responding to 
snatchmails and phone calls asking for a quote, and even then will 
demonstrate breathtaking incompetence. That's one of many reasons why 
my book ain't gonna be available in audiotape unless the Library of 
Congress or similar entity does the job itself.)

>His primary audience for this was not people with disabilities.

That horse won't hunt. Discussions of accessibility must be accessible.

>PS:  Frankly, I find the price of Jakob's study much more 
>objectionable than the delivery format.

As professional reports go, it ain't that bad. Even I sell my reports 
for vastly more than that.

And for those of you trying to ply your "contacts" in the mighty 
NNGroup for help: Keep in mind that his excellency can and will 
forbid his employees to answer your mail if you displease him; 
NNGroup distributes essentially no free copies of anything (not even 
New Riders, his excellency's publisher and mine, gets comps of his 
reports); and researchers refuse to answer even politely-posed 
questions concerning small details of methodology (e.g., "How many 
subjects did you survey?"). There are reasons why his excellency and 
his royal consort are so very widely despised. The difference here, 
as compared to people like me, is that his excellency and his consort 
can get away with pretending the enemies do not exist.
-- 

   Joe Clark | joeclark@joeclark.org | <http://joeclark.org/access/>
   Accessibility articles, resources, and critiques

Received on Wednesday, 26 December 2001 17:32:57 UTC