- From: William Loughborough <love26@gorge.net>
- Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 05:26:12 -0700
- To: Liam McGee <liam.mcgee@communis.co.uk>, eowg <w3c-wai-eo@w3.org>
Liam McGee wrote: > Suggest addition: > > - ALA article http://alistapart.com/articles/workingwithothers First off, I fully agree that user input is absolutely central to our undertakings. That said, I feel that because most Working Group participants are themselves testers (Gregory Rosmaita springs to mind) or at the very least quite closely connected to PWD, much of the need for more formal presentation of the relevant research is largely less important than claimed therein. However the main thrust of the article is in my experience/opinion dependent on the lack of distinction between "newbies" and those same clients after exactly the same growing pains experienced by TABs. If our guidelines are based on slightly-skilled users we risk falling into the "dumbing-down" trap, so choices of "subjects" for this research would be too influential because of the necessarily small sample size. In short I think the article is correct in its call for more user participation but erroneous in its citation of much that is actually problems with their inexperience and the shortcomings of the rather unsophisticated design of such AT as screen readers, the very use of which is highly dependent on its users having gone up the learning curve. Love.
Received on Friday, 13 October 2006 12:26:12 UTC