- From: gregory j. rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:07:05 -0400
- To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
- Cc: <andrew_kirkpatrick@wgbh.org>
KB: For examples, advertisers _want_ to distract you from doing other things. To them it -is- a good thing that banner ads draw your attention -- why else are they used? The purpose of the banner ad _is_ to distract the user, or else you don't use a banner ad at all. KB: Sorry if these harsh realities bother some folks, but the "intent of the author" is for that there animated gif to "distract" someone. That is its function in the design. And the author -should- retain the ability to decide which components of the page will actively try to attract attention. GJR: no one's denying this, just saying if the means used to capture the user's attention are potentially harmful, then those implementing them should be made aware of the possible rammifications of their actions... we're not a legal body -- we can't "outlaw" or "enjoin" anyone or anything... we can ask that content developers/implementers at least consider our recommendations and the medical evidence -- and EO, through the policies page <http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/> will keep content developers apprised of any pertinent local laws and regulations which may impact upon the implementer's decision... [speaking of implementing, kudos to andrew kirkpatrick of WGBH/NCAM who, in response to this thread on w3c-wai-ig slapped together a very illustrative resource, which is described at: <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2001JulSep/0260> and which can be accessed at: <http://ncam.wgbh.org/richmedia/flicker_demo_start.html> as far as whether or not we can state, either in good faith or good conscience, that the "until user agent" clause of 7.1 is obsolete, from the varied reports of UA control over the animation, i'm not convinced that we can actually say that they do, unless everyone resubmits their "i got it to stop" reports with detailed system and user agent information, including all specialized settings (deviations from default) and a list of all installed plugins... which is the reason why making "simple" test pages is extremely difficult -- it is extremely important to take into account all of the conditions which determine the rendering of what the user agent guidelines refer to as "conditional content" advertisers use distraction as part of their arsenal because they want to escape what i call the "new yorker syndrome" -- the ability of a significant portion of the population to disassociate the gutter ads that run along the edges of the bulk of the magazine's pages from the magazine's content... when i was able to visually process print, the only time i ever paid any attention to the advertisements in the new yorker was when i was, er, indisposed, and only had recourse to copies i had already read from front to back.... obviously, when the advertisements aren't consciously processed, they're removed from the reader's perceptual field, allowing the reader to process only the articles ... once the their perceptual field, allowing them to read articles without consciously processing any of the advertisements... i was able to what, in retrospect, i realize were highly intrusive ads never prevented me from just plowing through , but i do know some people far more intelligent than i who simply could not follow an article once the rows of advertisements appeared -- it was simply too distracting -- for some it was their attention that wandered; for others, it was a physical reaction to certain types of content or combinations of colors... i have a friend who quite literally suffers from "captured eye syndrome" -- obviously, i don't know the clinical term, but when he encounters certain combinations of shapes and/or colors, he literally can't take his eyes off of them -- nothing else on the page is perceivable, save for whatever it is that has captured his attention, which may explain why he decided to pursue a career (the law) whose professional literature is almost utterly devoid of illustrations, or at least usually or was 13 years ago when i spent a lot of time as a student of medieval history in the university's law library... one thing that we should get straight before we carry this conversation any further is that there is a huge difference between a site's content and the advertisements that it displays -- the most common complaint i've heard from those who are responsible for web portals is that they have very limited control over the content that fills those precious bits of virtual real estate on their pages -- a situation which is exacerbated when the advertisements are served to the portal by a third-party clearinghouse via scripts -- in that case, the content creator not only ceded a portion of the portal's real estate to an advertiser, it has ceded control over the quality of the code used to insert the advertisement into the rendered document... but we're not speaking of an advertisment, per se, as i understand this particular case -- it is a case of one organization seeking to link to a resource on another, related, organization's web site...
Received on Thursday, 26 July 2001 23:06:10 UTC