QuickTips a hit at Senior/Health/Web event.

Trip report:

Last Friday I participated for a while in a meeting sponsored by the SPRY
foundation on  how to get health information to senior citizens via the
Web.  See www.spry.org.

I was a panelist in Interactive Session D, which dealt with the fact that
people browse the web with a variety of user interface configurations,
especially when they have disabilities, which get more prevalent in
advancing years.  "Interactive session" means that the panel had nominally
eight minutes each to frame the topic, and then the bulk of the session was
a structured group brainstorming and decision process.

The win for this event was taking a wad of QuickTips cards.  I got our
rapporteur for our session to wave one in her 10 minute report-back and
tell people to pick them up on the way out.  Everyone I talked to wanted
one.  There was not time in my flying visit to train the "reporting chain"
to carry any more complex message.

Al

PS:  For what it's worth, here is the spin I gave my pitch:  Don't just
think of seniors with disabilities.  Realize that many of your intended
audience are not only one computer upgrade behind the great mass of the
population, they are also one upgrade behind on their eyeglasses and
hearing aid.  Taking the effort to scrub you site to meet accessibility
guidelines is a good stress-test to make sure that it won't fail to be
usable for the seniors you want to reach.

I also trotted out my standard line about "Know that there are
technological aids available [Bobby and WAI guidelines] to help you create
a universally accessible site; but also know that the technology can't do
the whole job.  Use the technological aids first, and then to be sure, get
you prototypes checked out by real people with disabilities who actually
use assistive technology and alternative user interface modes.

If there is a problem with either of these story lines, I need to be trained.

Received on Thursday, 1 April 1999 21:13:33 UTC