- From: Matt May <mcmay@bestkungfu.com>
- Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 09:58:05 -0700
- To: <apembert45@lycos.com>, "Anne Pemberton" <apembert@erols.com>, "Jonathan Chetwynd" <j.chetwynd@btinternet.com>, <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>, "Marja-Riitta Koivunen" <marja@w3.org>
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anne Pemberton" <apembert45@lycos.com> > Incidently, I have a difficult time with so much said and inferred that sound and multi-media are mis-used on the web. It is distressing to see how often something that displeases or doesn't appeal a person is judged "mis-used". One man's useless is another man's essential. MM I didn't say multimedia displeased or didn't appeal to me. I said I've run scientific tests which show that multimedia sites such as those demonstrated by Jonathan are less usable than standard HTML-based web pages, due to inconsistency, non-discoverability and distraction, and this is consistent with other research in the field of web usability. It's not a personal opinion. Multimedia sites are designed not to look or function like one another, which turns the navigation process from something learned by repetition into something that needs to be re-learned at every page. Additionally, sites like these obscure information by not being searchable (the text inside is not only invisible to screen readers and text browsers, it can't be parsed by search engines either). Yes, they look nicer and some people prefer them on subjective criteria, but nothing that's been suggested here leads to an objective statement that multimedia treatments of all the pages on the web aid the accessibility of the whole web. Much less how to make non-educational or non-entertainment sites accessible in this manner. - m
Received on Monday, 23 April 2001 12:59:43 UTC